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 also obligations. We have the right to ask for a different commitment."
Ewan had hoped to change his fortunes at the Tour after a lean season including one official victory.
"Definitely a win, but I hope for more than just one. If I left without any, I'd be very disappointed," he said of his aims in the lead-up to the Tour.
"One thing that I've never struggled with was motivation. I'm still so motivated to come back to my best and I want to win in the Tour again. That is one thing I never really struggled with. I never lost that.
"I still have my eye on what I wanted to achieve in the season and alright, the first part didn't go so good, but like I said before, my priority and the one race I really want to do well in is at the Tour, so I always had that in my mind, that alright, first part wasn't great, but you can always turn it around."
Leading into the Tour, Ewan had a question mark over his preparation, having missed the Giro d'Italia and competed in fewer WorldTour level stage races.
He traditionally has started the Tour with the Giro d'Italia in his legs, but Lotto-Dstny, after being relegated last season, opted to skip it this year. It also didn't send a team to the Tour Down Under, where Ewan competed with the national squad instead.
Ewan asked Lotto-Dstny if he could compete at the Critérium du Dauphiné last month but was sent to the Tour of Belgium instead.
"They didn't really give me a reason. I asked and they said no so that was that," Ewan had said. "The preparation for sure this year is a lot different to what I'm used to. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It's actually been quite a good prep."
He was eager to return to the Tour for his career fourth participation.
"I love the big stage, high pressure, it's a big event and I like that. I much prefer that than doing smaller races in Belgium, it doesn't really excite me that much to be honest," he said.
Ewan has only won one UCI-classified race this year, the 1.1-rated Van Merksteijn Fences Classic, but has picked up five second places, including two painfully close defeats at the opening stage of the UAE Tour and again in the GP Monseré. His last WorldTour win was in Tirreno-Adriatico in 2022.
Cyclingnews has reached out to Ewan for comment. The sprinter is contracted at Lotto-Dstny to the end of 2024.
