Australian cycling’s little big man Caleb Ewan living up to the hype

BEFORE Caleb Ewan was unleashed in his rookie professional season in 2015, his team challenged him to win five cycle races for the year. He won 11 and now is setting his sights on WorldTour glory.

BAY CYCLING CLASSIC

BEFORE cycling young gun Caleb Ewan was unleashed in his rookie professional season in 2015, his team challenged him to win five races for the year.

By February his Orica-GreenEDGE bosses went back to the drawing board because Ewan had ticked that box before even leaving the country, and after the Tour of Langkawi his wins tally was up to seven.

In what was one of the most anticipated professional debuts in Australian cycling for years, the pocket rocket from Bowral in NSW lived up to the hype by winning 11 races and a ton of respect last year.

And that confidence and form has already rolled into 2016 and this week’s national championships in Ballarat, where he won the criterium on Wednesday night.

“I definitely knew there was pressure because it’s been talked about for a little while now, me making the step-up to the WorldTour,” Ewan said of his neo-pro season.

“But to be honest I would have been pretty disappointed if I didn’t get five wins and even now I look back at some races and think ‘if I did this better or that different maybe I would have another five wins’.

“So I don’t think you are ever completely satisfied but I can’t complain about how the year went.”

The 21-year-old won races in Australia, Malaysia, Korea — where his mother’s family is from — and saved his best for last in Spain.

By winning Stage 5 of the Vuelta a Espana, Ewan did what not even Robbie McEwen or Mark Cavendish had — win a stage of a Grand Tour in his first season.

After 160km of racing, his teammates got him into a perfect position for the uphill finish and it was up to Ewan to do the rest.

He was shoulder to shoulder with soon-to-be-world-champion Peter Sagan and then on the wheel of superstar John Degenkolb before pulling to the left and unleashing his trademark burst of speed to win the biggest race of his life.

“Obviousy it was a pretty big confidence boost,” Ewan said.

“I was pretty confident I could be around the mark of those guys like (Marcel) Kittel and (Alexander) Kristoff and Cavendish and when I got to the Vuelta I knew that if everything went right then I could beat these guys.”

As impressive as the victory was, it’s what happened in the days afterwards that won Ewan the most prase, according to his teammate Simon Gerrans.

“He was there with the goal of winning a stage and once he had that he was there as a teammate, going back to get water bottles and doing all the bits and pieces guys had been doing for him,” Gerrans said.

“I think he earned a lot of respect not only from within Orica-GreenEDGE but within the peloton. For a sprinter, a young kid with a lot of ambition to turn around and go ‘well I’ve had my chance and now I’m going to help these guys out who were helping me’.”

Hot form ... Caleb Ewan. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Gerrans had been aligned with Ewan as part of Cycling Australia’s mentoring program for two years when they became teammates in 2015, and his family provided a home away from home in Monaco. Ewan would drop by for dinner even when Gerrans was away racing.

“I spent a lot of time with him on the bike and he’s definitely mature beyond his years when it comes to cycling,” Gerrans said.

“He’s got that hunger to win that’s a real trait in a lot of sprinters, if they get a sniff of the finish line then they’re really hard to beat and Caleb is pretty typical of that.

“But then it’s really cool because when we hang out off the bike he’s your typical 21-year-old, he’s just a kid at the end of the day and it’s a whole new adventure for him.”

At times it is easy to forget that Ewan is still just a kid.

He might be 165cm and 61kg with a cheeky grin but Ewan has no problem mixing it with the big boys on two wheels.

OGE was cautious not to put any pressure on him last year, setting modest expectations aligned with a modest race program and only agreed to start him in the Vuelta a Espana a fortnight before the race.

“There was talk at the start of the year that if everything was going well they’d put me in,” Ewan said.

“A couple of weeks out the team really knew I wanted to do it but they were still unsure whether I could do it or not because I hadn’t done a lot of WorldTour racing, but they made their decision after the Tour of Poland.”

While many rookie professionals describe their first year as a rollercoaster of peaks and troughs where one minute they’re feeling great and the next they’re being dropped, Ewan won a bike race in almost every calendar month.

He says the biggest challenge was not the racing but simply living away from his family on the other side of the world.

While Gerrans was his biggest influence last year, Ewan roomed with Mat Hayman at many races and says he could not have asked for two more experienced guys to help him make the transition to big-time cycling.

“The hardest part is not the step up in racing but the life change and living by yourself,” he told News Corp last week.

“That’s what a lot of people don’t understand, how hard it is and at times how lonely you get.

“With cycling there is no one there telling you to get out of bed and train, you have to be very self-motivated, because it’s not like a team sport where you all go to training together.

“Then if you don’t train you go to races and get smashed and you have no confidence anymore and it’s a downward spiral.”

Ewan’s last race for 2015 was Stage 10 of the Vuelta on August 31. Then OGE had him withdraw from the tour so he wouldn’t burn out.

But it made for what seemed like a never-ending off-season.

He had all of September off the bike and went travelling in Europe then spent time “living normally” in Monaco before returning to Australia.

After weeks of training on the roads around his home in the NSW Southern Highlands, he was back racing last week at the Mitchelton Bay Cycling Classic — which not surprisingly he won for the third time.

Having finished second in both the criterium and road race at the national championships last year, Ewan returned to Ballarat this week with plenty of fire in the belly ahead of Sunday’s road race.

“I’m petty excited, it’s one of my favourite races because there’s an awesome crowd there and the circuit suits me pretty well,” said Ewan who finished second behind Heinrich Haussler last January.

“But I don’t have massive pressure on myself to go there and win it because we’ve got guys like Gerro who can win it.

“We’ve always got options so it takes a lot of pressure off and I’m looking forward to it.”

Next he will ride the Tour Down Under in Adelaide then the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race and when he does return to Europe says his season will be defined by quality of performance over quantity of wins.

“More WorldTour wins, it’s going to be another transition year because I’ll be doing a lot more WorldTour racing and that’s the hardest step up,” he said.

To win at that level Ewan knows he needs a strong lead-out train which OGE will assemble for him to be competitive.

“That’s the one thing I found in the step up in racing you can’t really do it yourself,” Ewan said.

“In under-23s you could find your way around a bunch coming to the end of a race but you need to save so much energy leading up to a (WorldTour) sprint.

“I was really happy with the guys (last year), they never really doubted me and would always work bloody hard to help me get the wins.

“First year there are going to be improvements from myself and learning to work with the team and them with me, it’s not something that happens overnight.”

Ewan has it all before him and knows he needs to be patient, but that’s not always easy for a young man in a hurry.

[e-mail]

Originally published as Australian cycling’s little big man Caleb Ewan living up to the hype