"I was in a pretty sh*tty situation with my team" - Caleb Ewan explains departure from Jayco and joining INEOS
Cycling
The 2025 winter saw only a few top transfers from riders who were at the end of their contract, but plenty who broke their contract. Tom Pidcock, Maxim van Gils... And Caleb Ewan, who explains a part of why he left Team Jayco AlULa, joined INEOS Grenadiers and what it means for his career.
"There was a while where I didn’t really know what I wanted to do to be honest," Ewan admitted in the Geraint Thomas Cycling Club podcast. "That was just because I was in a pretty shitty situation with my team. So that was all going on and I honestly did not know what my future was going to hold, it was a very stressful time for me".
Ewan had a contract until the end of 2025, but there was an agreement to end it in 2024. The exact reason why has never been made public. Behind the scenes, it has been rumoured that a World Tour team had been interesting in buying out his contract, but then the agreement fell through. Ewan, who wasn't on best terms with the team, then saw his contract fall apart with no team for 2025.
“I didn’t know what was going on for I would say the past three months, four months. So it was pretty hard to know what I was training for. And I would say I’m a very goal focused person, so when I had no goal or nothing to train for it was pretty hard to get out on the bike. But It’s quite easy now that I’ve got a bit of a clearer focus.”
"Because of all that I didn’t really know what I wanted. To be honest they put me in a bad situation and it wasn’t ideal. Now I’ve kind of moved on a bit and I’m happy now that I’ve joined Ineos," he says. However for several months, the 'Pocket Rocket' barely trained. The British team is in no rush to put him back in the peloton, because of Ewan's preparation delay he will only start his season in a month's time at the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali. He signed with INEOS on the 23rd January.
Ewan has since had a month with his teammate, has trained with several of them, and is quite happy with the change of environment into a team that he says is above all others he's been in before. “It’s one of the biggest teams in the world for sure. I would say I’ve never really experienced a team of this scale before," he admits.
"There've been a few times in my career where I’ve kind of asked the question of joining, but it never really worked out, so I’m glad this time that it did".
Read also
Two teams, problems with the same rider. It is higher probability that its a rider issue
Looks very like it. He was doing fine at Lotto then it all started going wrong. Maybe Inios can straighten him out? It does look like last chance saloon though.
Just in
Play for FREE! Fantasy Tour of Flanders
Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter today!
Popular news
Latest comments
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- I am saying I have an open mind at the moment for your cobbles theory but cannot agree with your wind statement (and by extrapolation sprinting since that implies speeds where wind is by far the limiting factor). Had you argued all things not being equal I could have agreed with you but if we thus assume 2 objets of the same size and speed but with differing weights, it is completely obvious that the lighter one will suffer faster in the wind. Extrapolate to the extreme, drop stuff off cliffs or just remember your momentum equations to verify. Now, obviously in real life we have to assume riders of different weights won’t have the same wind hitting surface but you cannot generalise at all then as you can have very unaerodynamic light riders and very aerodynamic heavy ones because it isn’t weight that defines CdA, Teslas have an incredible CdA and are ridiculously heavy, and someone like Harry Levreyssen is a Tesla in cycling.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- When Roglic beat Geraint Thomas on the last day's TT at the Giro, I remember just how unbelievably emotional his team was. One guy, I forget who, German rider I think, was interviewed and was nearly speechless with a really drawn out "fuuuuuuuuuck it's incredible" comment. And then something even more amazing happened. Geraint Thomas came through the ranks of the Jumbo Visma riders and congratulated them all. True, honest, sincere, sportsmanlike, and celebratory of what had been achieved. Here he was, getting second, and he meant it. And cycling these days is like that, as you say - the way Pogacar hugged Matthews in Quebec, the way Matthews congratulated Pogacar in Montreal, on and on they honor and respect each other. It's pretty great.RidesHills04-04-2025
- Not sure exactly what you are saying, but if you're implying that being heavier is helpful if you're going against the wind or sprinting, then no, it isn't. Ceteris paribus (all else held equal) being a lighter cyclist is always better, save downhill. The reason why heavier cyclists do relatively better than lighter ones on flatter courses is because they will have to have a higher power than the lighter cyclist in order to have any chance at all against them, and flatter courses mean that the lighter cyclist has nowhere to display the better power to weight ratio, meaning that significant ratio is power to CdA, which is usually an advantage to the heavier cyclist.acem8204-04-2025
- Going over bumps is equivalent to going over many small climbs. Lower weight is always a good thing (ceteris paribus) except when going downhill, and even then it's not that advantageous if the downhill is at all technical.acem8204-04-2025