Australian sprint star Caleb Ewan has bounced back to his best sprinting form for Team Jayco AlUla, putting his Tour Down Under sickness woes behind him to annex the opening stage of the Tour of Oman.
Sydneysider Ewan's move home to his old Australian outfit had begun impressively in January when he won the national criterium title.
But disappointments followed when he missed out on wins when feeling under the weather during the country's main stage race as Sam Welsford stole the domestic sprinting honours at the Tour Down Under.
But the diminutive 29-year-old, consistently one of the fastest in the peloton until a loss of confidence and some ill-fortune over the past couple of seasons, looked back to his sharpest with that old familiar blistering turn of speed in Saturday's race earning him his first UCI win with Jayco and career victory number 61.
"I’ve had a few opportunities so far this year and never managed to win, so the pressure was building, but now I’m finally happy to get another win for the year," said Ewan, after comfortably outpacing Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) and Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X Mobility) in the bunch finale.
"In general, the race was pretty easy, but the hard part of it was probably judging the finish line that was slightly uphill, so you just needed to time the sprint right.
"This was the only sprint of the race, so no more stage opportunities for me, but we have Davide [De Pretto] here who can do a good GC, so we’ll be working for him from now on.”
But the win over the 181.5km route that finished at the Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre certainly bodes well for Ewan, whose departure from previous outfit Lotto-Dstny had ended acrimoniously after a team official had made derogatory remarks about his performances.
But Mat Hayman, sport director of his new Australian team Jayco AlUla, couldn't have been more thrilled, declaring: "This is great for Caleb’s confidence.
"We knew he’d done all the training over the winter, he just got a bit of bad luck and got sick at Tour Down Under, but it’s great for him to come back here and get a win.
"We only had one chance here in Oman with Caleb - the rest of the race is pretty hilly - so the boys really wanted to get it right today."
