As a young child, Caleb Ewan would stay awake late into the evening at his family home in the Southern Highlands, watching on television as the pinnacle of international cycling played out on the roads of France. On Wednesday, the dream that emerged those many years ago in the mind of young Ewan came true half a world away in Toulouse, as the Australian won his debut Tour de France stage.
Ewan readily admitted afterwards that the triumph fulfilled a longstanding childhood ambition. But it also felt like vindication. The emotion etched on the 25-year-old’s face after he narrowly outsprinted Dylan Groenewegen in a frenetic bunch finish certainly suggested Ewan had proved a point.
It seems odd that doubt persisted over the ability of this prodigious sprinter, who managed almost 30 wins during his first professional contract. But despite winning stages at the Vuelta a España and Giro d’Italia, Ewan’s critics have remained vocal ever since his rapid emergence as a teenager on the domestic scene. When team Mitchelton-Scott named Ewan in their 2018 Tour de France squad, only to drop him weeks before the race, it added ammunition to the arsenal of those who thought this diminutive cyclist was a mere pretender to the throne of Australia’s past sprint kings.
Ewan’s switch to Lotto-Soudal in January amplified the pressure. The move meant that Ewan was now his team’s primary card in the perpetual poker match that is the World Tour; he could no longer be shuffled behind the ace of spades that had previously been his teammates’ general classification abilities. Following an underwhelming final season with Mitchelton-Scott, including that embarrassing Tour de France omission, when Ewan began the 2019 season in new colours there was a sense that it was now or never.
After the sprinter started sluggishly at the opening Grand Tour, it seemed Mitchelton-Scott had been prudent in parting ways with a rider they had groomed from precocious teen to world class sprinter. Ewan finished third on the second stage of the Giro, second on stage four and fourth the following day. In sprinting, there is first and there is everyone else. But on stage eight, the doubt evaporated. Ewan powered to stage success, before doubling his tally three stages later.
His performances this month in France conjured a sense of deja vu. The pressure that had surrounded Ewan in Italy was back with a vengeance as he began his debut Tour in Brussels. He was on the lowest step of the podium on the opening stage, and again finished third on stage four. He nabbed second on the seventh stage, and another third days later.
As the race headed for the mountains and the opportunities for stage glory diminished, the weight of expectations on Ewan’s shoulders grew ever heavier. On Wednesday, just as doubt was creeping into the minds of even his most ardent supporters, the Australian delivered – again.
Ewan’s win elevates him into the pantheon of great sprinters who have demonstrated the necessary combination of technical ability and raw speed in the cauldron of the Tour de France’s challenging finishing straits. He will now turn his attention to the few remaining sprinter-friendly stages of this edition before pondering an attempt at the Vuelta or other opportunities at the tail-end of the World Tour calendar.
Traditionally, the apex for demonstrating unrivalled sprint prowess has been the Tour’s points classification contest. But an increasingly evenly-matched sprint line-up – no rider has won more than one stage in France this year – and the growing relevance of climbing ability in the points battle has moved the resplendent green jersey beyond the reach of Ewan and his pure-sprinter colleagues.
Even if Ewan never replicates the points classification triumphs of compatriots Robbie McEwen, Baden Cooke and Michael Matthews, he joins the trio among the dozen or so Australian cyclists to ever win an individual stage on cycling’s grandest stage. Ewan joked afterwards on Twitter: “If I don’t do anything in my life again after this point at least I can say I won a stage of the [the Tour].”
The scenes of France that Ewan followed voraciously as a child on his small television set were narrated by the dulcet tones of Phil Liggett. It is apt, then, that the iconic cycling commentator was one of the first to pinpoint the potential of this pocket rocket. When Ewan, as a 17-year-old, powered past a world class field on the streets of Geelong in January 2012, Liggett remarked that sprint stars McEwen and Mark Cavendish couldn’t have done it any better.
Ewan has now followed in those illustrious footsteps by winning the first of what will no doubt be many Tour de France stage victories to follow. Perhaps, as Ewan lifted his arms aloft in Toulouse, there was a young, bleary-eyed Australian glued to their own television screen, who may one day emulate the feat.