Caleb Ewan struggled to fight for victory again Padua Sprint, his Jayco-AlUla team admitted that many factors fought Australia in the Giro d'etalia

Ewan is neither ill nor out of form but lacks the speed needed to compete in the high speed Giro Sprint. It's a great place to start. He also doesn't have a dedicated lead-out train of quality and quantity that is helping tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) and Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) win the sprint.

Final lead-out man Luca Mezgec abandoned the Giro before the Garda Lake time trial and Jayco-AlUla is also trying to defend Filippo Zana's top 10 in the overall classification and target stage.

"He is not sick. I think his condition in general is really good, but he lacks top-end speed a bit," Matt White, Jayco-AlUla Director of High performance and racing, told Cyclingnews.

Ewan showed that positioning is once again his biggest problem in the Padua Sprint.

"It was pretty awkward. There was a rush for 400 meters and the corner to go, I was there myself and was overwhelmed by the corner. I was back too far again," Ewan said in dismay before getting on the team bus.

The 29-year-old from Sydney returned to Jayco-AlUla in 2024 after a bitter divorce from Lotto Dstny. He and the team had hoped to restart his sprinting career, but so far his only victory is on the stage on the tour of Oman, and then some standings.

Ewan shares his sprint duties with Dylan Groenwegen at Jayco-AlUla and plans to ride the Tour de France and the team has not yet completed support for both sprinters.

"Yes, no," White said when asked if the lead-out was a factor in Ewan's lack of top-five results in numerous Giro d'Italia sprints.

"Obviously they were quite hectic sprints, and in some sprints you'd like to dial them a little better. But we have one more chance," White said, perhaps remembering the final stages in Rome where Mark Cavendish won in 2023 after a similar three weeks of suffering and disappointment.

Ewan has ridden the Giro d'Italia 5 times, but has never finished a grand tour of Italy. White believed that was also a factor.

"We tried a few other things, the way we do things is a little different," he said, referring to Ewan's race program and altitude training, not the 4-month race

"This is the first time he actually tried to complete the giro. He had always used the Giro as a stepping stone to the tour, which meant hopping off after 10 days, 12 days, and never getting through the mountains,"White

" The 222-kilometre mountain stage to Livigno on Sunday was the biggest day of his career. Caleb has used advanced training successfully in the past, and as I said, his condition is good. Not sprinting as we liked.

White has many years of racing and grand Tour experience and knows that professional racing is never easy, logical or easy.

"The plan wasn't to get on the GC with Zana, that's for sure," White said, mixing irony with realism. "The plan was for EDDIE Dumbar to go to the GC, Ewan to go to the sprint and Zana to go to the stage. 

"But after Stage 2 we lost Eddie in a nasty crash. Due to the close distance with the top 5 guys, Zana could not move towards winning the stage last year.  

"We were unlucky and stuck between a rock and a hard place. But it's a grand tour race, things rarely go completely as planned. You've always been able to adapt and that's what we're trying to do. The giro is not over yet."

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