As a first year professional, Caleb Ewan has plenty of eyes marking his progress that amounts to five wins this season from 19 days of racing for 2,641.9km. The 20-year-old Orica-GreenEdge rider has already won on three different continents with victory in two stages of the Jayco Herald Sun Tour in Australia, two stages at the Tour de Langkawi and the Spanish one-day race Vuelta a la Rioja.
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But his year has also been a learning curve, as he told Cyclingnews before leaving his base in Monaco for the Tour of Turkey that starts on Sunday and where, for the first time, he will race the Etixx-QuickStep pair of Mark Cavendish and Tom Boonen in the bunch gallops - not to mention a bevy of other sprint stars.
RG: Each win you've had this season will have been important in its own way, but was your win in the Vuelta a la Rioja the biggest so far?
CE: Yeah … Well, I think the [two Tour de] Langkawi [stage] wins were probably bigger, but it was good to get to Europe and get a win, especially after [the Volta a ] Catalunya went so badly. It [Vuelta a la Rioja] was a relatively small race … But we went in with a really strong team … It was probably the easiest race I have won so far this year just because of how well the team rode and how strong they were.
Rupert Guinness is a sports writer for The Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax Media)