Q&A: Catching up with Connor Delves on the success of his Cadel Evans play and plans for TV

Adam Kenna Photography, Connor Delves If you'd told me last August that most of the ambitions Connor Delves had for 'Cadel: Lungs on Legs' would blossom within the year, I'd have cast you a dubious expression – not because the play's no good, far from it, but because it's hard to wrap your head around just how much has happened.Delves and I first met almost exactly 12 months ago during the premiere run of his one-man play ‘Cadel: Lungs on Legs’ at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. By the time we spoke, he was about a third of the way through a sellout month, which is no mean feat at the Fringe. A year later and he’s living the dream: He and the play he co-wrote have got bigger and better, and more audiences have seen the show in London and numerous venues back home in Australia, including a grand opening during the weekend of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race at the end of January 2026.Cadel Evans is the subject of a new one-man show, and it’s bloody goodAustralian actor-athlete Connor Delves is premiering ‘Cadel: Lungs on Legs’ at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival – coming soon to a theatre near you (hopefully).A year after the debut of ‘Cadel: Lungs on Legs’, Delves has returned to Edinburgh – coming straight from the Tour de France – for the show’s second Fringe run in a much bigger venue. A week in, he’s already selling out.We met on the morning of his first rest day, six shows deep, to catch up on the play’s development, Delves' recent adventures at the Tour de France, and his big plans for the future.Kit Nicholson: First things first, can you fill me in on what you’ve been up to since August last year?Connor Delves: After Edinburgh, we had one night in London to show it to people there and test out what it could look like in a bigger venue, then we went away and got into the upgrade process. We worked for a few months on new video, we hired a bigger team – all Australian creatives still – built a set, and added the TT bike, which was really cool to find still hanging on for dear life, and we put that in for the Australian tour.We started the 10-week Australia tour in Perth where I’m from, and we sold out every single seat – we extended three times and just kept selling out. Then the five-star review in The Guardian really changed the trajectory of the show, because it rings true across the world, everyone knows The Guardian. Everyone started to notice it, and we started to get phone calls asking for us to come as opposed to me having to call people.But before the tour started, we opened the Great Ocean Road Race weekend with a performance at Geelong Arts Centre for 600 people including Cadel, so it was the first time he saw it. Phil Liggett was there, and Phil Anderson was there, Caleb Ewan, all the Aussie crew, and SBS were there, and just a great group of Australian cycling supporters. That sort of blew it up in the Australian cycling community.Connor Delves on stage as Cadel Evans, riding in and on authentic kit and equipment – including one jersey worn to victory by Evans himself on stage 4 in 2011. It has (apparently) never been washed despite having now gone through 80-something stage shows.Evans and Delves in Geelong, and a few weeks later backstage at Warrnambool, Victoria.Seeing Cadel on stage with me and Phil in that Q&A, and seeing Cadel try to handle people turning in their seats to look at him watching me… That was a really cool experience, and he was so generous. You know, coming up on stage and there’s cameras everywhere, everything that he does not like. It was basically the hit of the weekend and we’re going back there next year again to kick off round two for Australia. It was just awesome, and a massive venue as well. To fill 600 seats was ‘wow, this is bigger than I thought it was going to be.’