Cycling obsessives are united by a common bond. We all know the struggle associated with trying to explain our wonderful sport, to espouse its virtues, to the uninitiated. The blank expressions when you mention the mythos of the Puy de Dôme or the chaos of the Trouée d’Arenberg. The sheer bewilderment when you try to explain the role of a domestique, never mind an echelon.
So, it may come as a surprise to learn that one of the runaway hits of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, the world’s largest performing arts festival, was a one-man show about a professional cyclist.
And no, it isn’t a Hollywood-ready drama about Lance Armstrong or Gino Bartali, or even the 1989 Tour de France, eight seconds and all that. The play is, instead, about Cadel Evans – and the Australian’s historic 2011 Tour victory. And it’s bloody good, mate.
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‘Cadel: Lungs on Legs’ (a title derived from praise heaped upon the rider by an early coach) is a one-man show co-written by and starring New York-based Australian actor-stroke-athlete Connor Delves, that traces Evans’ often tumultuous journey to the top of the cycling world, where he became the Tour’s first, and to this date only, Aussie winner and, at the age of 34, the race’s oldest post-war champion.
Cadel Evans on last day of 2011 Tour de France (credit: Photosport International)
Premiering at the Fringe this summer, and centred around Evans’ crucial Tour-winning time trial in Grenoble, it recounts the BMC leader’s nomadic upbringing (including a close encounter with a horse) and his path to the pro peloton through mountain biking and the Australian Institute of Sport.
Those agonising near misses at the Tours of the mid-2000s are there, as are Evans’ often tetchy relationships with both his teams (looking at you, Lotto) and the media, and his redemptive, late-career triumphs at the world championships in 2009 and that groundbreaking 2011 Tour.
Evans’ story is a fascinating one, for sure, but the way Delves tells it on stage is just as extraordinary. The actor – in what the play’s press release aptly describes as “an epic feat of endurance” – performs basically the entire one-hour show while riding a BMC, set up on a Wahoo turbo trainer. And when I say he’s riding his bike, he’s really riding his bike.
When Evans is overhauling Andy Schleck on the way to yellow during that decisive final time trial in 2011, Delves is down in an aero tuck, pumping out the watts. When he’s hauling himself up the Galibier, he’s out of the saddle, hunched over, elbows wide in trademark Cadel-style. In Mendrisio, he sprints that final kilometre to the rainbow jersey.
Connor Delves as Cadel Evans (credit: Cadel: Lungs on Legs)
In the small, cavernous, 88-seater room, with its awkward wide layout and extremely low ceiling, that served as the play’s home for three weeks, located just beyond the dizzying claustrophobia of the Fringe’s variation on the Royal Mile, the sweat on the stage at the end of Cadel’s hour is very real.
Delves tells road.cc he covered over 27 kilometres during every one-hour performance. Every day. For three straight weeks. While acting. Talk about a grand tour.
Adding to that fusion between the athletic and the artistic, when I briefly caught up with Delves after the show, he carried the hollowed-out, drained – if still decidedly cheery – expression of a pro cyclist halfway through the Tour’s third week.
It’s fair to say the hard work paid off. Cadel: Lungs on Legs was one of the breakout hits of the 2025 Fringe.
The Scotsman described Cadel as a “compellingly physical tribute” to the Tour’s oldest post-war winner. Theatre Weekly gave it five stars and branded it a “great story, passionately told with heart”, and basically every review called it a ‘tour de force’. Because it wouldn’t be a review about cycling without that well-worn cliché, would it?
It also won two ‘best show of the Fringe’ awards, MyCulturalLife’s reviewer said it was the “best thing I’ve seen in 24 years of the Edinburgh Fringe”, and – after word of mouth got round – every single show for its final two and a half weeks (90 per cent of its run) was a sellout.
Following that whirlwind in Edinburgh, Delves is taking the play to London for a one-off showcase on 12 September, and plans are afoot for a longer stay in the capital, as well as runs down under in Australia (naturally) and New York.
Yes, we’re still talking about a play about cycling.
Connor Delves as Cadel Evans (credit: Ryan Mallon)
Back home in New York, where he was enjoying a few rest days before heading across the pond once more for his upcoming showcase in London, Delves – understandably – links the sensation of creating a hit play with that experienced by Evans following his long-awaited Tour win.
“Perhaps similarly to how Cadel felt when he won the Tour, it’s a very strange feeling to be through the Fringe and the premiere, because it went so well,” he tells the road.cc Podcast. “We knew what we were taking and we were confident with the show, but you never know how audiences are going to respond.
“So to be sold out, have audiences really excited, and to have the theatre audience embrace it as well, with the critics being very kind, it’s overwhelming. I’m now excited to be sharing it with more people.”
The fact that Delves created a play about a professional cyclist – and one that requires him to actually ride a bike – should come as no surprise. He grew up in his family’s bike shop in Perth, and has continued cycling and running his entire life (with a bit of Aussie Rules thrown in).
“I really wanted to bring endurance and elite sport to the stage,” he says. “Because it was something I knew I was capable of, and it’s something you don’t see. You don’t see authentic sport on the stage very often.
“One of the goals of the show is to bring sport and theatre together on the macro level. But on the micro level, there are lots of similarities between being an athlete and an actor – and I just happen to be both of those things.
“So, I can really understand the mindset. For instance, the Tour – yes, it’s three and a bit weeks, but it takes years of planning, building the team, getting the right people into place, the training, and some luck as well, to pull off a Tour de France. And just to finish it, let alone win it.
“And it’s exactly the same with a play. To create a play, particularly in this political and financial climate, is one of the most difficult things in the world, let alone to do it well and to go to the biggest festival in the world. And this year was actually down on overall sales, so for us to sell out and have the reception and success we did, it’s a miracle.”
Connor Delves as Cadel Evans (credit: Cadel: Lungs on Legs)
Of course, as anyone who’s experienced the pain of a winter training alone in their shed will know all too well, riding a bike on a turbo trainer for an hour every day is not easy. Especially when you have to produce some high-quality, dynamic acting, as well.
To prepare for the role, Delves undertook, with the help of a coach, a serious turbo-focused training regimen (even eschewing outdoor rides for a blast on the Wahoo), as well as a new diet which involved giving up alcohol.
And, like any good Tour contender, Delves also devised a fuelling strategy – built into the play’s narrative – for before, during, and after the show.
“I knew when I first came up with this idea, I said I want to ride on stage for an hour flat out, full gas,” he asserts. “People can see the gears, I’m not lying. I’m dialled into the trainer, with the back wheel on and you can see the watts that I’m putting out. It’s like doing an interval session every day.
“Every show is tracked as well, so you can see what I’m doing – and the sweat on the stage at the end of the show proves that too!
“And Cadel is such a gritty rider, he really worked for his wins. Some of those pulls on the mountains, where he hung onto the Schlecks when it looked like he could be dropped, he did by himself.
“He wasn’t dragged along, he didn’t have as super team to pull him up the mountains like some other Tour winners. The way Cadel rode is a big reason why I wanted to bring it to the stage, because he’s so gritty and could lock in at a high threshold of pain.
“Someone said to me the other day, ‘oh you must like the pain’. And I said, ‘well, I do now!’ Because I know I can do it. But it’s a mindset you have to find.”
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Cadel Evans (credit: Gian Mattia D’Alberto)
It’s clear Delves has a strong affinity with his subject, his sporting hero growing up as a child in Perth, where many late nights were spent watching Evans slog up an Alpine col in pursuit of yellow.
“Being an Australian, we, as performing artists and story tellers, are being encouraged to write and speak about who we are, and what we come from. And there are not many opportunities for Australian performing artists to speak their own voice on the global stage,” he says.
“And it’s something I’ve always been really passionate about. What Cadel did for me as a child – I was in my early teenage years when he won – and the only time I was allowed to stay up late was to watch the Tour! And I stayed up late a lot, because there were so many good stages that Cadel was doing well in.
“And it just really changed the fabric of Australian sport. And he’s so Australian in the way he holds himself, so down to earth, about the hard work, he didn’t do it easy. It felt like a perfect fit really.
“He’s such a great representative for our country, for the sport, and has had an incredibly interesting life. It’s so entertaining and so theatrical. It made perfect sense to me, and I said to myself, ‘well, Timothée Chalamet can’t replace me on this one’, so I think it’s the right one for me!”
That connection with Evans (who Delves chatted with while writing the play), and genuine love of cycling, has resulted in a show that strives for authenticity, right down to the retro noughties kit and tech he uses on stage.
The attention to detail is impressive. Predictor Lotto’s divisive salmon kit is there, as are Evans’ trademark black and green Diadora shoes, and the actual BMC jersey, complete with rainbow band sleeves, that Evans wore when he beat Alberto Contador in a photo finish at Mûr-de-Bretagne on stage four of the 2011 Tour.
And the yellow Teammachine Delves rides during the victorious Champs-Élysées scene – albeit less ferociously on the turbo and with fewer watts than the rest of the show – is the one BMC built especially for Evans’ ride into Paris.
BMC yellow Cadel Evans Teammachine (credit: Ryan Mallon)
For a show that achieved such critical and commercial success during its run in Edinburgh, it’s also (I was pleased to discover) packed with little details that will appeal to obsessives.
Evans’ long-term frustration with Lotto, which came to boiling point at the 2009 Vuelta, is covered in detail. There’s the mechanical on the Télégraphe in 2011, the boos that greeted Contador at Puy de Fou, and, of course, that infamous ‘don’t touch me’ moment during one of Evans’ hated post-stage encounters with the media, who Delves admits play the role of the “villain” for much of the show.
That authenticity is accentuated by the use of two screens either side of the stage, occasionally playing real footage and commentary from Evans’ career.
Delves also recreates the final moments of that 2011 time trial – a stage he says that still gives him “tingles” – pedal stroke by pedal stroke, backed by Phil Liggett’s live commentary. And that’s where Delves’ fastidious attention to detail and immersion in the world of Cadel pays off spectacularly.
“Knowing we had to match me up with footage, we had to get that right. Swinging around the final corner in the TT in 2011 is probably my most favourite image of all time,” he says.
“And with Phil’s voice, and Phil being such a supporter of the show, I knew I had to nail that, to learn exactly what pedal stroke he was on for which word, when he went back onto the TT bars, I needed to match that exactly.
“And people get joy in that, seeing the fusion of the actor and the real person come together. I was big on the physical side and the way he climbed, but in terms of his personality – there weren’t actually many mysteries in the way that I played him.
“I think there’s a blend of me, the actor, bringing my understanding of him to the role. But I would like to think there’s enough of authentic Cadel in there that. Phil Liggett said to me, after our first show, ‘that was Cadel, you are Cadel’.
“And that was a very moving moment for me because Phil knows him so well and Phil is the cycling person in the world for me anyway. When Phil said that, that was a nice tick of approval.”
So, after taking Scotland by storm, what’s next for Cadel?
Well, Delves, after showcasing the play in Soho this week, is hoping to secure a longer run in the capital, before taking it ‘home’ to Australia in 2026 and then New York, where he’s based. And, who knows, a television series about the life of Cadel Evans could be coming to a streaming platform near you in the not-so-distant future.
“Cycling is watched on the screen, on the TV, and I think it would make a great TV series,” he says. “That’s my dream for this. It’s something I would love to do, to play him actually riding out on the roads, riding the actual mountains. Making this into a mini-series is the end goal.
“And people say, oh, you’re quite bold saying that. And I’m like, well, Cadel was bold in winning the Tour.”
More information about Cadel: Lungs on Legs and future dates can be found at cadeltheplay.com.
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