Lotto Soudal relegation worries: Ewan part of the solution or part of the problem?
One of the big topics in cycling coverage so far this year has been the battle for UCI points. Notoriously the 18 teams with the most UCI points accumulated from 2020 through 2022 will be the first in line to receive a WT license from 2023 through 2025. At the moment it is looking more and more likely that Lotto-Soudal will miss out on a top 18-placement, and therefore lose their WT license which guarantees the right to start in the biggest races on the calendar. They could however still receive a license if any teams decline the license or don't meet financial requirements, but it is far from optimal to have to rely on such a scenario.
Lotto and old superstars
A lot has been said and written about the causes for Lotto virtually missing out on said placement. The most obvious ones seem to be the signings of Philippe Gilbert and John Degenkolb on multi-year deals ahead of the 2020 season, but why?
Philippe Gilbert is a legend of the sport and joined Lotto off the back of a phenomenal Paris-Roubaix win in 2019, but he was also turning 38 in 2020 and had been on Deceuninck-Quick Step for the 3 previous seasons. The Quick-Step formation is well known for its long list of riders who improve upon joining and rapidly decline upon leaving (Elia Viviani, Fernando Gaviria, Niki Terpstra, Marcel Kittel, Tony Martin), a phenomenon commonly described by the term “the Quick-Step effect”. Lotto decided to offer Gilbert a 3-year contract that would see him being paid a relatively high wage until his 40th birthday and beyond.
John Degenkolb is a rider who will go down as one of the great classics riders of his generation and was only about to turn 31 when he joined Lotto-Soudal. He was the last rider before Tadej Pogacar in 2021 to win 2 monument classics in the same season, something he achieved by winning both Milano-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix in 2015. Sadly though, his rising star came to a halt when he was hit by a car during a 2016 training camp. It’s always hard to be certain when pinpointing the causes of someone not performing on the same level they used to, but the discrepancy in victories he achieved before and after this tragic incident is remarkable. Degenkolb won 40 professional races in the 2011-2015 stage of his career, of which 19 were World Tour races and 2 were monuments. After that, despite being only 27 years old in 2016, he has won but 8 races, of which only 2 are on World Tour level.
A first conclusion after looking at these signings is that Lotto seemed to have overlooked obvious concerns about these 2 riders. There is no clear indication of a lack of effort or commitment from these 2 personally. Gilbert, despite suffering from a serious case of bronchitis, even decided last-minute to race Paris-Roubaix this year because he felt the team needed him and would go on to become their best-placed rider in the race.
Caleb Ewan
Let’s take a look at a signing that is being widely regarded as positive for the Lotto formation: Caleb Ewan coming over from Mitchelton-Scott at the start of the 2019 season. Lotto had just decided to part ways with their legendary sprinter Andre Greipel and needed a replacement. Caleb Ewan had been given limited opportunities at Mitchelton-Scott because the team gave priority to the general classification ambitions of the British Yates brothers. Ewan was snubbed for the 2018 TDF roster despite targeting this race for the whole season and performing at a high level in top races. He only just missed out on a monument win to solo escapee Vincenzo Nibali in Milano-San Remo. At first sight, Lotto and Ewan look like a match made in heaven, but have they turned out to be?
The answer is yes and no. Ewan is a perennial grand tour stage win threat, upon joining Lotto he has won grand tour stages in every full season he's completed for the team. He also climbed on the podium of Milano-San Remo again in 2021 and looked like a contender to do so again this year until illness decided to keep him out of the race. This makes Ewan a dream for a cycling sponsor: he shows up in the big races and will almost certainly make for great publicity in doing so. Ewan also plays a big part in why a lot of the cycling community views it as unfair that Lotto-Soudal would be relegated. They have the perception of a successful team because Ewan wins a lot and wins in prestigious races. Lotto’s direct competitors like Arkea-Samsic, Cofidis, and even EF don’t have any rider in their roster that is highly likely to win a stage in every grand tour they participate in. But what about his contribution to their UCI points tally?
The points
The UCI rankings are put together in such a way that the least profitable wins in terms of points are those in stages within stage races. At every sub-level of UCI races (.2, .1, .pro, .UWT) the most points are awarded to get results in the general classification of a stage race or a one-day race. Stages are the afterthought of the rankings, for example:
Tour de France GC victory: 1000 points
Tour de France stage win: 120 points
Monument classic win: 500 points
But even more remarkable:
.pro general classification/one day race win: 200 points
.1 general classification/one day race win: 125 points
As you can see, a Caleb Ewan stage win in the most prestigious race in the world is worth less than a Jacob Hindsgaul GC win in the less acclaimed Tour of Antalya (most famous this year for hosting YouTuber Bas Tietema’s first participation in a .1 level or higher race since 2018).
Ewan's schedule
There are more elements in this system that could be criticized but when you are in the position of Lotto-Soudal you have to be pragmatic. The rules have been public for years and these rules favor results in one-day races and general classifications over stages. So why is Lotto Soudal’s most high-profile rider a sprinter specialized in winning grand tour stages? And why are they not sending him to more one-day races? It’s the combination of these 2 elements that have led to Ewan being a part of Lotto’s problem. His 2021 season was the most blatant display of exactly the point I am trying to make. He targeted his season around attempting to become one of the first riders in cycling history to win a stage in all 3 grand tours in 1 season. Targeting to ride them all in one season leaves only limited room for other race days, and the remaining races he did get sent to in 2021 were mostly stage races. Ewan participated in 3 one day races out of which he completed only 1, Milano-San Remo.
In the stage races he participated in, Ewan was mostly successful but Lotto was left empty-handed. For winning a stage in the UAE Tour, Ewan received 50 UCI points. For winning a stage in the Baloise Belgium Tour (where he had to compete with top-level sprinters like Cavendish, Merlier, and Groenewegen), Ewan received 20 UCI points. And then disaster fully struck as Ewan took himself out of the Tour de France with a nasty crash. This didn’t leave him enough time to get ready for the Vuelta either and he ended up rounding out his season with participations in the Benelux Tour and the Skoda Luxembourg Tour, where he (despite a stage win in the former) achieved only a total of 50 UCI points over 10 race days before eventually abandoning both races prematurely.
Ewan vs. Jakobsen: luck?
Lotto general manager Lelangue has regularly attributed the meager scoring by Caleb Ewan to bad luck but frankly, I think luck played a rather small part in Ewan’s disastrous points tally. Ewan could have perfectly scored a biblical amount of points despite crashing out of the Tour de France if not for scheduling blunders and better support than the often unreliable Lotto-Soudal sprint train. The most compelling argument for this is the points tally of Fabio Jakobsen in the same 2021 season. Jakobsen had crashed badly the year before in the Tour of Poland and spent half the season trying to regain his fitness after being in a coma for several days after this horrendous crash. By the time Jakobsen first started showing glimpses again of being the superstar sprinter he had been before, it was already nearly August. But Jakobsen’s team Deceuninck Quick Step, despite not actively needing UCI points to avoid relegation, ended up lining him up in 5 one day races and 1 grand tour after his first win since the crash in Poland. Whereas Ewan received 40 points for beating Merlier and Cavendish twice in the Belgium Tour, Jakobsen received 225 points for beating Jordi Meeus and Danny Van Poppel twice in the Gooikse Pijl and the Eurometropole Tour.
Positioning
A topic that should come up when discussing Caleb Ewan is his strike rate in sprint stages. When in a good position he can deliver the win regularly, but oftentimes his sprint train can’t get on the rails which leaves Ewan stranded in no man’s land. Jasper De Buyst has shown the ability to deliver Ewan in a good position but the rest of the sprint train has seemed unable to keep the pairing in a good position, as well as De Buyst not looking like he can solve positioning issues on his own like the very best lead-out men in the world sometimes can. This often leads to a “when it rains it pours” scenario for Ewan where one part of the lead-out not being able to hold its own leads to the whole train collapsing. Lotto has tried to solve this problem by using Kluge as a last man with De Buyst positioning the two. Since Kluge then didn’t quite have the top-end speed to launch Ewan properly, Ewan had to start his sprint from far out to avoid getting swarmed by other teams. Lotto tried to improve their sprint train ahead of the 2022 season by adding Rudiger Selig and Michael Schwarzmann (both on Bora-Hansgrohe in 2021) to the roster. Sadly for Lotto, they aren't the type of riders to deliver standout lead-out performances. This is highlighted by the fact that the Bora train looks better than ever with Van Poppel and Mullen replacing them, even if Sam Bennett has been able to finish it off with a win only once so far in this season.
Ewan seems less capable of independently finding his way to a competitive position to start a sprint than a specialist of positioning like Jasper Philipsen (who has been in a competitive position in 9 out of 10 races where he was in the peloton that sprinted for the win so far in 2022), or guys accompanied by an outstanding train like Cavendish, Jakobsen, or Sam Bennett. All of this led to Caleb Ewan winning only 1 out of 3 sprint stages in the Saudi Tour despite being visibly the fastest sprinter there, as well as coming 15th in the first Tirreno sprint stage of this season.
The overall conclusion for me is that Caleb Ewan is not the most efficient allocation of Lotto-Soudal's budget. Despite being one of the best sprinters in the world he has failed over the last seasons to help keep Lotto Soudal in the top flight of cycling. Aside from throwing around Ewan's schedule or improving his support squad, there is another route that I think the team should be exploring.
The GC guy
Tim Wellens, Maxim Van Gils, and Harm Vanhoucke are 3 riders that have scored UCI points this season by performing well on general classification in mountainous races, but nothing they have shown so far suggests that they can replicate these performances on World Tour level regularly. In fact, Lotto doesn’t have anyone in their ranks who can, and what Lotto does have already is an upcoming sprinter who is extremely talented in Arnaud De Lie. The ultimate solution for the Ewan problem and the one I would personally like the most is to get Caleb Ewan off the books as soon as possible and replace him with a rider who can regularly compete in World Tour GC races without needing much support. Cofidis have done something similar, where they let Viviani and Cimolai go and replaced them with Ion Izagirre. Izagirre immediately proved his worth by getting top 10 placings in Gran Camino and Paris-Nice, and even a 2nd place accompanied by a stage win in the Tour of the Basque Country.
Another competent GC rider who is out of contract at the end of this year is Wilco Kelderman. He has proven over the last 2 years that he is a GC threat in any World Tour race he starts, despite getting caught up in the occasional crash. And most of all: these guys don’t require much support, which allows Lotto to give some of the riders currently on Ewan's train more freedom, or replace them. Kelderman and Izagirre are good time trialists which means they don’t need someone to set a high pace on climbs to gain time. And with the recent acquisition of ex-time trial specialist, aerodynamics freak, and world hour record holder Victor Campenaerts, Lotto has someone on board now who can help to optimize the TT set-up.
So, beloved staff of Lotto, if you’re ever reading this: get yourselves a GC guy, I think it’s a no-brainer.