Cycling: Dean joins Delhi team fresh from top Tour

Julian Dean. Photo / Rotorua Daily Post

Julian Dean has made himself available for the Commonwealth Games in October, an event he has not attended since Kuala Lumpur in 1998.

The 35-year-old cyclist yesterday completed the 3500km two-wheeled torture known as the Tour de France in style, finishing third on the Champs-Elysees.

He was beaten to the line by sprint ace Mark Cavendish, who won his fifth stage, and green jersey winner Alessandro Petacchi.

Spain's Alberto Contador won his third tour, beating Luxembourg's Andy Schleck by 39 seconds, with Russia's Denis Menchov third 2m 01s back.

Dean finished in 157th, 3h 56m 13s back, taking a tick under 96 hours to complete the course.

For riders like Dean who are never a factor during the alpine stages, the key is not where they finish but that they finish at all.

Dean's stage 20 result sat alongside his two second-place finishes, making his the finest Tour de France by a Kiwi in terms of podium finishes and, though cyclists with their different strengths and roles in the tour are notoriously hard to compare, the best tour overall.

Even Tino Tabak, who finished 18th in the general classification in 1972, conceded that Dean was the best professional cyclist New Zealand had produced.

His next assignment is a rest before peaking for the world championships in Melbourne in early October. That road race course in Geelong could be tough for the sprinters with a sharp climb on each lap.

Delhi will be flat, however, and will almost certainly come down to a bunched sprint finish. Dean and Greg Henderson would expect to be contenders under those circumstances.

"I'll have a small break first as I have time to get into form to hit another peak for the world championships," Dean told radio yesterday. He has earned his "small break" after a tour script that appeared to be written for a drama queen rather than one of the more laconic riders in the peloton.

The Garmin rider fell heavily on stage two and admitted still feeling the effects of that crash when finishing second behind Petacchi two days later.

He was a protagonist in the head-butting incident that saw Mark Renshaw kicked off the tour for head-butting him during the sprint finish on stage 11.

Five days later, as he warmed up for the brutal Pyrenees stage from Bagneres-de-Luchon to Pau, a policeman tackled him off his bike when mistaking him for a spectator who had breached the security cordon.

He was also accused, somewhat lamely, of using too much force when muscling his way to second on stage 18 into Bordeaux.

About the only thing that would have made his tour more eventful would have been if he were shot, but he covered that last year when he rode the final stages with an airgun pellet in his hand after a gunman fired at the peloton.

His three podiums were all the more remarkable given that he was intended to be lead-out rider for American sprinter Tyler Farrar. When Farrar withdrew because of a broken wrist, Dean, in his sixth tour, was given his head to compete against the rock stars in the field.

Over the final two sprint stages he got the better of the likes of Thor Hushovd, the man who was once crowned the best lead-out rider in the world.