Lotto-Dstny manager Stéphane Heulot has strongly criticised Australian sprinter Caleb Ewan after he abandoned the Tour de France during stage 13 to the Grand Colombier.
The five-time Tour stage winner was already in trouble on stage 12, making the time cut by six minutes, but stage 13 proved too much for him.
He was seen out the back of the peloton clutching his abdomen with some 56.6km remaining, as the road rose to the day’s intermediate sprint, and then the announcement came through on race radio he had quit before the summit finish at Grand Colombier.
Ewan was seen leaving the team bus at the finish and after a short telephone conversation, got in a team car, without talking to journalists. In a statement issued later, Lotto-Dstny said the 29-year-old had struggled with fatigue for several days.
“Leaving the Tour is a real shame. I want to express my gratitude to the team for their big support and I hope they can still show some nice things in the stages to come,” Ewan said in the statement.
Teammate Maxim Van Gils finished stage 13 in second place, having been part of the main breakaway.
Prior to quitting, Ewan placed third on stage three into Bayonne and second to the in-form Jasper Philipsen the next day at Nogaro despite temporarily losing teammate Jasper de Buyst, who didn’t participate in those two sprints due to a wrist injury from a crash on stage two.
But Ewan failed to impact thereafter, his latest placing being 15th in Moulins, having lost another key lead-out man in Jacopo Guarnieri, who abandoned after fracturing his collarbone in a crash on stage four.
“We expected more. We saw in the last sprint he wasn’t in it any more,” Heulot told L’Équipe after stage 13.
“His lead-out man was right next to him. That’s disrespectful to his leadout. I can’t accept that. The lead-outs take crazy risks to be there. I can’t do anything, it’s up to him to sort it out, I don’t know how to handle this kind of character, I’ve never seen that.
“He asks for a lot from his team, it’s a lot for him, always for him. I’m very pleased Van Gils [second on stage] was able to react like that.”
Sporza reported that Heulot had said Ewan mentally “was not in great shape”.
“The Tour confirms the image of what we saw of him this spring and also last year. The first sprints were still satisfactory, the other opportunities were not,” Heulot told Sporza.
“Caleb wanted to give up yesterday, but Jasper supported him. We wanted to see him in Paris. A rider not only has rights, but…
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