With the Tour de France firmly in the Alps at the moment and ready to hit the mountains once again on Tuesday following the rest day, the coming stages will be case of survival for a large portion of the peloton, not least the sprint stars who have shone on a few occasions during the first half of the race.
There have been notably few chances for the sprinters to do their thing so far in the Tour, with back-to-back wins in Denmark stage 2 and 3 for Dutchmen Fabio Jakobsen and Dylan Groenewegen the only pure sprints of the opening nine stages.
As one of the fastest finishers in the pro peloton, Lotto Soudal sprinter Caleb Ewan would have expected to be up there battling for the wins, but on each occasion has been undone by some bad luck at the worst moments.
The Australian, then, will be battling through the Alpine stages of the race with 13th and ninth places to his name, and can only hope to do better in the three likely sprint stages left to race.
"Obviously I am here to try to win a stage and we haven't done that yet," Ewan told Cyclingnews at the start of stage 9 on Sunday morning.
"But I think it's only been two opportunities to sprint so far. We knew coming into this Tour that there weren't going to be a whole lot of opportunities.
"I think the next – I don't even know when the next one is – after the rest day sometime. But yeah, it's been quite a hard Tour so far."
Ewan, who celebrated his 28th birthday on Monday's rest day, found himself sprinting with a damaged derailleur on stage 2 and then boxed in as Wout van Aert squeezed Peter Sagan across the road the following day.
He sounded relatively upbeat speaking at the Lotto Soudal bus, despite his bad luck so far, and only had praise for his teammates, who – including mid-season signing Reinhardt Janse van Rensburg – have come together in an unfamiliar lead-out train for him.
"It's been good," he said of his lead outs. "You know, they've been doing a really good job, basically what I've wanted them to do. We said already before that we don't have the guys to really bring me to 200 metres to go, but just to keep me out of trouble as long as possible and get me as deep into the final as possible.
"Then from there I'll try to work it out myself. But obviously, when you do it like that, then you can have some bad luck, which I think I've had in the first two sprints.
"So, I think if my luck was a bit different in the first two, then we could have had a win, but it wasn't so. I think I have the legs to win so hopefully in the next few sprint chances I'll be there."
The coming stages, though, will see any thoughts of lead outs and sprints banished from Ewan's mind as the peloton takes on a trio of summit finishes at Megève, the Col du Granon, and L'Alpe d'Huez. While the likes of Philippe Gilbert, Tim Wellens, and Andreas Kron will be free to fight for the break and stage wins, Ewan and his lead-out men will switch to survival mode.
"You know, we've got a fair few really hard stages coming so it'll just be – not even getting through trying to conserve energy – I think it's just getting through within the time limit is the main thing," Ewan said. "Hopefully I'm not having a bad day on any of these harder days."
