It’s a case of different Giro, same story for Caleb Ewan and Lotto Soudal.
Caleb Ewan is in my opinion the best sprinter in the world, just to air the obvious bias at the head of affairs. He’s the sort of sprinter that you just need to get a sniff of the win and he’ll get on the podium, if he arrives equal with any other sprinter in the world he wins.
The problem for Ewan is that he isn’t always delivered to a spot by Lotto Soudal that he can take the victories that his talent demands.
Last night’s Stage 3 at the Giro was another example of poor positioning completely taking Ewan out of the contention for the win. It’s difficult even locating Ewan before the final few hundred metres where he flashed home by far the fastest for eighth. He didn’t even slingshot his way through slipstreams to do so, he rounded the field into the wind, leaving me and no doubt many others wondering ‘what if’.
Caleb Ewan marked with the arrow at 250 metres to go on Stage 3 of the 2022 Giro d'Italia.
Ewan started the sprint by my estimate about 11-14 bike lengths off Cavendish and he finished three behind on the finish line. He made up about 15 metres in a discipline that is often decided by millimetres. It's a situation almost exactly replicated by last year's Giro first sprint stage, when he was again nowhere as the race headed into the final sprint and he finished 10th.
Ewan far right finishes eighth behind stage-winner Mark Cavendish at the Giro.
First of all, check out of the Giro d’Italia sprinting action. Stage 3 was more-focused on Mark Cavendish’s win, but it could have also have been the tale of what Lotto Soudal should be doing in the future, as Cavendish and Ewan were in very similar positions with two kilometres remaining.
They were both in the middle of the peloton as a split opened up in front of them, Quickstep and Cavendish powered to the front, Lotto Soudal and Ewan got caught up in the mess behind and became separated, Ewan was back mid-pack, maybe 30th position, with no help.
Lotto Soudal are all-in for the Australian sprinter as they have been in the past, but they’re not getting him in the position that he needs to be to finish things off. I don’t think they’re a bad leadout train, but they’re not up to the quality of Quickstep, FDJ or Alpecin-Fenix.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility that they could put together the perfect leadout, they showed at the Tour of Turkey that they could do it consistently. Normal final man for Ewan, Jasper De Buyst, himself finished sixth twice and fifth once such was the strength of the Lotto Soudal leadout train at that race.
A broken collarbone after approximately two seconds of racing in treacherously slippery conditions in the Tour of Turkey sees de Buyst out of the Giro, a crucial element of the team for Ewan missing.
That loss and the fact that even with de Buyst they’re not the match of the other trains means that they should go to a more foolproof Plan B.
The goal of most sprint trains is to arrive late with speed, not wasting energy at the front of the race until 500 metres to go as the final swoop delivers their sprinter with full force at the 200 metre mark.
However, Lotto Soudal should be playing with different goals in mind, harking back to a strategy they used last year at the Giro d’Italia and past Tours de France in almost the same situation.
The strategy basically entails getting Ewan ahead of the washing machine of the peloton fighting for positions and use up all the support riders to get Ewan to the head of affairs with a kilometre left. From there, Ewan has shown plenty of times that he has the ability to freelance and win, Stages 5 and 8 of last year’s Giro saw the next highest Lotto Soudal rider finish 67th (de Buyst) and 113th (Oldani) respectively.
He's shown that he can give away that extra momentum from his teammates delivering him late and instead impart his own and still win.
A Tour de France stage where a similar strategy was employed was Stage 11 of the 2020 Tour, where Ewan was dropped off by De Buyst with a kilometre left and then picked his way through the bunch for a dramatic victory.
As I mentioned at the top of this opinion piece, I'm not an impartial observer, and rather than gambling on Lotto Soudal's ability to deliver Ewan late, I'd prefer to see them take the better odds of the best sprinter in the world overcoming a slight deficit.
Watch the Giro d'Italia on SBS with Stage 4 of the Italian Grand Tour on SBS On Demand Tuesday night from 8.15pm AEST, with the SBS coverage starting from 11.00pm AEST. WA viewers can tune in from 9.00pm AWST on SBS VICELAND.
