Caleb Ewan underlines Tour Down Under sprint credentials with opening win

Australia’s Caleb Ewan emphasised his status as the No1 sprinter in the Tour Down Under, winning on Sunday night. The 22-year-old Orica-Scott rider held off two-time defending world champion Peter Sagan to take out the People’s Choice Classic.

The Adelaide street race is a hitout for the field ahead of the six-day Tour, which starts on Tuesday, and it is the second year in a row that Ewan has won.

Sagan was third behind his Bora-Hansgrohe teammate Sam Bennett from Ireland. The Slovakian star looms as Ewan’s biggest threat in the sprint stages during the Tour.

“It’s a nice feeling, because at the moment he’s the best rider in the world and to beat him in a sprint, it feels great,” Ewan said. “I sprinted quite early – earlier than I would have hoped – but I’ve just got a whole lot of confidence going into the next week of racing.”

Ewan made the most of a strong performance from Orica-Scott, who set their sprinter up perfectly. It was the first time Ewan has worked with his new leadout rider, Roger Kluge.

“We probably went quite early compared to a lot of the other teams [in the final sprint], but they rode absolutely perfectly,” Ewan said of Orica-Scott. “It started off well with Roger as well, he delivered me perfectly.”

Sagan was pleased with the hitout and said his team had been working mainly for Bennett. “It was good – not super-good, but it was OK,” he said. “We wanted to do a sprint for Sam Bennett and then he was second, it’s OK.”

Asked how he felt ahead of the Tour, Sagan said: “we will see – we’re going to recover now.”

Ewan wants to make his debut in March at the Milan-San Remo classic. His team director Matt White said the start of the season is an audition for Ewan, who must prove he is capable of performing at Milan-San Remo.

So far this month Ewan has won a race in the Bay Classic series, successfully defended his Australian criterium title and now won the People’s Choice Classic again.

“It’s great to start the season off like this again and hopefully that works towards something else,” Ewan said.

Young Australian Ben O’Connor (Dimension Data) had a great race, leading by himself for well over half the 22-lap, 50.6km event. But as expected, he was caught with four laps left as the sprint teams set up for the bunch finish.