Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to a great Australian sportsman, Cadel Evans, because I believe that he epitomises what is great about sport in this country and the great principles of sport at the elite level. There is a tendency among the sport spectating public to see sport as just the competition; to see the final sprint and the podium presentation. That is not where the race was won. Cadel Evans did not just line up at the start of the 2011 Tour de France. He has a long history of competition and training, and that led to his victory.

He was born on 14 February 1977 in the Northern Territory, calling Victoria home for most of his youth. He makes the point that he really did not fit into the sports that were played at his schools, because he was not big and was not fast. Yet it was the case that he developed a strong interest in cross-country bike racing in 1991. Psychologically tough, he was dedicated to this sort of endurance sport. In 1994, he began to branch out into road racing to help with his mountain bike racing. It was, however, not until 2001 that he finally transitioned completely to road racing. In 1998 and 1999, he had won the world cup in mountain biking. We should also remember that he came seventh in mountain biking at the Sydney Olympics.

He is best known for his more recent career on the road. The most famous of all the road races is the Tour de France, which takes place across the varied landscapes of France and on occasions in the territory of its neighbours. I and many Australians like to tune in to the excellent SBS coverage of the tour each July. I appreciate the effort involved, which appears to be superhuman at times. But, as I said, it does not just start on day one and finish some three weeks later. It so often starts with a dream in youth and a determination to undertake the training required to achieve the goals that individuals set themselves. That is what sets elite sports men and women apart from others.

For the elite competitors like Cadel Evans and Samantha Stosur, winner of the US Open in tennis, there are endless hours of training that we do not see. They often do that training by themselves. While most of us are still asleep, they are up training before dawn without the glitz, without the glory and without the attention of the fans or the media. They train by running long miles, by lifting weights, through strength and conditioning workouts and then through their sports specific training. Heart rate monitors and video recordings of their techniques are just some of their aids to maximise their performance and, in the case of Cadel Evans, to try to get those extra hundredths of a second's improvement that will see him victorious. The point is that nothing just happens on the day for Cadel Evans or athletes like him; nothing comes down to chance and nor will some lucky charm provide victory.

When you look back at the competitive career of Cadel Evans, it was certainly clear that he had great potential to succeed. Ten years ago, in 2001, he won the Tour of Austria and since then there have been stage or overall victories each year, culminating in victory in the most famous cycling race in the world, the Tour de France.

Although he has trained very hard throughout his career, he has also had to contend with the psychological challenges that are so often very much a part of elite level sport. There is no doubt that Cadel Evans's highs have exceeded his lows. However, his second places in the tour in 2007 and 2008 and then not achieving the podium in 2009 and 2010 would have made a lesser sportsman wonder whether their time had passed, but in 2011 it was clear that Cadel Evans was in excellent form: fit and, above all, tough psychologically. He won the Tirreno-Adriatico race and the Tour de Romandie and came second in the Criterium du Dauphine. His win in the fourth stage was followed by overall victory in the general classification in the Tour de France. As I have already said, such success is not a result of luck. An elite athlete must be psychologically and physically tough. They must be prepared to sacrifice a comfortable existence for the solitude of training, all in pursuit of their dream.

I do not call professional athletes or elite sportsmen heroes. They do not risk their lives for others in pursuit of noble causes. They are not like our soldiers or our emergency service people, but they do provide us all with a very good example of what is important and what great principles of sport exist for others to emulate. They show our young people that great sporting success is not achieved by merely showing up on race day but, rather, that success is the culmination of hard training, commitment and psychological strength. What Cadel Evans has shown us all is that success is not an overnight plan but, rather, the outcome of a dream, brought to reality by a commitment to a lifetime of effort.

We were there with him for that final ride into Paris, but what we know is that if we desire such success ourselves we need to be there for the training and the preparation, where there is no cheering crowd and where it is wet and cold and not just when the sun is shining. We need to understand that defeat may be on the path to victory and that we must be resilient to the challenges that face us. This is what I see as the lessons that Cadel Evans has provided for us all, so I honour him for his lifetime of dedication which has seen him ascend to the very top of cycling in the world.

See this speech in context