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Caleb Ewan’s return to Australian World Tour team Jayco AlUla, which we’ll refer to as GreenEDGE cycling for simplicity due to many name changes, has been heralded with plenty of fanfare across the Australian cycling scene.
It's certainly hard to see it as being anything other than an improvement, but there are several factors that could complicate the rosy picture being painted.
The 29-year-old sprinter’s relationship with current team Lotto-Dstny had devolved into a public tit-for-tat across the media. In Ewan’s defence, Lotto-Dstny manager Stephane Heulot seemed to be mostly at fault, calling out Ewan’s abandon at the Tour de France as letting the team down, and the back and forth has continued since then.
There was a 'mutual agreement' to end the contract per Lotto-Dstny's press release, I would have thought that would involve at least some money to Ewan given that he had a year on a reportedly expensive contract left to run.
Ewan will look to put that drama behind him at GreenEDGE, the team he got his World Tour debut with in 2015, though it is interesting that he has opted to do that with the Australian team, given the way he left the squad in 2018.
That year was set to be the Australian's debut at the Tour de France, with the team confirming the selection way out from the 2018 Tour, in December 2017. Normally, that’s to allow the chosen leader the chance to get themselves right and race in a way that guarantees that they’ll be good in July rather than wasting good form scrapping for results in lead-up races.
As it turned out, the team reneged on that agreement, saying Ewan’s form wasn’t good enough to warrant selection and took a team of climbers to the Tour de France that year.
Ewan left for then-Lotto Soudal in the 2019 season. That was also the season where Ewan was second at Milan-Sanremo, when the team attacked with Matteo Trentin rather than trying to bring lone escapee Vincenzo Nibali back and Ewan mopped up the bunch sprint.
“It means a lot to me to come back to GreenEDGE,” Ewan said in the team statement announcing the move. “I had a lot of success with the squad in the past, it’s obviously where I started my professional career, so I have really good memories from being with GreenEDGE those first few years.”
I’m not sure if ‘those first few years’ is to the exclusion of 2018, but it would be lying to say that there were many happy memories from the racing side of things in that year, and it was viewed as a positive for Ewan when he got a deal as a top sprinter with Lotto Soudal.
Now, coming back is also viewed as a positive move. No one wanted to see Ewan reduced to riding a handful of lesser races with little team support as would have presumably been the case in 2024 at Lotto-Dstny.
He won’t be the number one rider at GreenEDGE, rather one of many leaders, with Simon Yates presumably the top rider and then a mix of Eddie Dunbar, Dylan Groenewegen and Michael Matthews as others with leadership roles. And if you look at how other sprinters have fared at the Australian team, there should be some wariness.
Leaving aside Ewan’s own experience, an Australian sprinter on the rise is Kaden Groves.
The phenomenally talented, versatile sprinter reminded many of Ewan when he came on the scene.
However, he’s not plying his trade for GreenEDGE anymore either, now riding for Alpecin-Deceuninck - winning three stages and the green jersey at the Vuelta a Espana and a stage at the Giro d’Italia.
There, in his final season, he had just the one Grand Tour participation at La Vuelta, with Groenewegen taking the Tour de France, and a climber’s team at the Giro.
Ewan comes into the same situation but with more pressure. However, he is a different rider, more experienced from years of carrying the leadership mantle at the Tour de France, and with more experience navigating team politics, though not always successfully.
“I’m definitely coming back to the team as a more experienced rider, in the last few years I’ve won the biggest race of my career and I think I’ve developed a lot as a rider and also as a leader,” Ewan said.
“When I joined the team initially, I was only 19 or 20, so I was very young. I learnt a lot from the experienced guys that were already there and used that going forward in my career.
“I have developed as a person and as a rider and I look forward to coming back in more of a leadership role. It will be great to be able to help the younger Australian riders too, to reach their potential and in that way also give back to the team.”
Ewan and Groenewegen will not only have to share race starts but also leadout riders. I think there is a good leadout to be made from a combination of Luka Mezgec, Kell O’Brien, Blake Quick, Max Wahlscheid and Michael Matthews, with maybe the likes of Jan Maas, Luke Durbridge and Felix Engelhardt also playing a role.
That is probably the best aspect of the move, and gone are the days of looking to the backmarkers in sprint stages and spying Jasper de Buyst struggling single-handedly to carry Ewan’s leadout, or arriving far too early at the front of the race and telling Ewan that he’s on his own from there.
Despite that positive, it’s too early to be popping premature Tour de France victory champagne corks. Noticeably absent from the press releases, hoopla, and media interviews was any commitment to a race schedule.
Jayco AlUla chief directeur sportif Matthew White gave something of an idea for the plan to manage Groenewegen and Ewan.
"We’re very, very clear with our athletes,” said White in an interview with GCN. “We won’t have Caleb competing against Dylan for spots. Dylan has his programme, Caleb has his. And they won’t be clashing at all.
“We’ll have one of them at every Grand Tour, it's just who goes where.”
