Cadel Evans was born on 14 February 1977 at the Katherine Hospital, Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia. He is the son of Helen Cocks, a bank manager and Paul Evans, a council foreman. He spent his early childhood in the small aboriginal community of Barunga, 80 km east of Katherine. At the age of seven, he was hit in the head by a horse and spent seven days in an induced coma. In 1986, his parents got divorced and he moved with his mother to Armidale, New South Wales. Later they moved to the state of Victoria. Skateboarding was one of his interests when he was a teenager. His father describes him as a good student, but otherwise just an ordinary kid who would leave his toys around. "Not in [my] wildest dreams" would he imagine that his son would become a top world athlete.