After two stages of battling in among the last riders to finish at the Tour de France, Caleb Ewan rolled over the mountaintop line at Col du Granon with a more comfortable margin to the time-cut on stage 11 as the whole team rallied around him. It was a welcome improvement, but not enough to make the 28 year old forget his previous days in the mountains, or that the biggest challenge of the Alps still remains.
On stage 9 Ewan rolled over the line in the last group of 6, stage 10 he was the very last rider, so it was understandable that before stage 11 was not overly optimistic of his chances of making it through to the end of the Tour de France as hoped He told reporters “I definitely want to finish but with how I’ve felt the last few days it’s not looking good”.
Though, on Wednesday the Lotto Soudal rider who scooped up five Tour de France stage victories across the 2019 and 2020 Tour de France survived another day, this time finishing off the bottom of the results list and 38:59 behind winner Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma), well within the day’s 43:52 margin.
“I actually had everyone in my team wait for me today just to make sure I could make it in the time limit,” Ewan told Australian broadcaster SBS. “I went through a few phases of my legs being really bad and then they came good and then in the end I was pretty comfortable within the time limit so that’s good. But I think tomorrow is going to be the hard one, starting uphill.”
Stage 12 heads straight into the Col du Galibier before taking on the Col de la Croix de Fer and then the final haul up the hairpins of Alpe d’Huez. It of course will be another day that could be make or break for the GC riders but also has potential to spell the end of the Tour de France for riders like Ewan because of the time limit – a percentage margin on the winner’s time.
Last year on the Tour it was stage 9 to Tignes that provided the biggest time-cut challenge, with seven riders outside the limit and out of the race, including Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) and Bryan Coquard (B&B Hotels p/b KTM). Ewan, however, was already long gone by then having crashed in stage 3 and broken his collarbone.
Ewan hasn’t finished a Grand Tour since the 2020 Tour de France – and has only finished two across his career – so hasn’t had as many recent in-race opportunities as some to condition for survival through a series of long days in the mountains.
He said on the mountains before stage 11 that he had…
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