Ewan ready to pay price

SOON after Caleb Ewan’s Tour de France omission last year, his friend and fellow cyclist Richie Porte spotted the sprint ace on a training ride.

It was a high-intensity fitness test — not quite how Porte would have handled the devastating news.

“I reckon I would have been about three tubs of Ben And Jerry’s down,” Porte said.

A year on, Porte is as interested as any cycling fan to see what Ewan will do at the Tour.

Ewan makes his much-anticipated Tour de France debut from Saturday when the threeweek race starts in Brussels.

“He’s motivated — he’s probably been waiting longer than necessary, really, to be making his Tour debut,” Porte said. “Caleb definitely has a stage or two in him.

“At his best, he can take it to basically anybody.

“I’m excited to see Caleb there, as a friend and as a fan.”

Ewan and Porte are the main talking points among the eight Australians in the Tour field, down from last year’s 11.

Porte will lead the TrekSegafredo team and at 34, time is running out for the luckless Tasmanian to achieve his dream of a podium result at the Tour. Ewan is a decade younger and just as determined to make his mark.

Last year, the Australian Mitchelton-Scott team had flagged Ewan’s Tour de France debut for several months. But they pointed to his lack of results when the pocket rocket was a late scratching from their line-up.

There also had been speculation about Ewan’s future and the non-selection effectively guaranteed he would leave the team. Ewan is now the No.1 sprinter at the powerful Dutch Lotto-Soudal team. Unlike last year, there is no quibbling about his form.

Ewan won two stages in May at the Giro d’Italia and another last month at the Dutch ZLM Tour. He is the heir apparent to Australian sprint legend Robbie McEwen, who won 12 Tour stages and three green jerseys for the points classification.