Opinion: 'No luck at all' - The sad state of Caleb Ewan and Lotto-Soudal after team crash at Tour de France

“If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all” wrote rhythm and blues singer William Bell.

Despite being recorded and released in the sixties, Lotto-Soudal’s Caleb Ewan could be forgiven for believing "Born Under a Bad Sign" to be a contemporary track all about him.

The Australian “pocket rocket” has completed 24 Grand Tour stages so far this season. He hasn’t won any, seriously contesting just a single sprint, Stage 6 of the Giro d’Italia, in which he lost out to Arnaud Demare by the smallest of margins. On two further occasions he has - literally - fallen victim to crashes, on days in which he was expected to compete.

Today’s nightmare, which came with 71km to go, as his team was working to pull back a seven-strong, defiant breakaway, simply should not have happened. It was not directly his fault, but it was that of his team, which means he bears some responsibility, even as he may opt to direct his ire towards other seats on the bus.

As unlikely an occurrence as it might have been, it’s easy to imagine how it can happen.

And while it ought, therefore, to be entirely forgivable, there can be no excuse for making such an elementary mistake as completely missing a corner and sending your team’s only hope of taking anything from the day crashing to the ground.

At the Tour de France you have 150-plus rivals trying to force you to make mistakes, such that you cannot afford to make unforced ones. Moreover, you are there because it is expected, demanded, that you won’t.

That it happened was a shock in the moment but not, in retrospect, a massive surprise that it should happen to them because Ewan’s terrible run of results seems to be both cause and effect of a wider, deeper malaise within his team.

It is one which means the Belgian outfit are staring relegation from the WorldTour in the face. In the league table, which covers the last three season of accumulated UCI points, they currently sit in 19th place. The top 18 teams in the league either stay up, if that’s the status they already hold or, as is all but certain for the likes of Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkea-Samsic, get promoted to the WorldTour from the level below.

Now it is not Ewan’s fault that they are there, though his run of disappointing results has obviously not helped.

The fault lies in the management of the team, which has placed almost every one of its eggs in Ewan’s basket. Yes, they picked up one stage victory at the Giro, as a result of Thomas De Gendt doing what Thomas De Gendt does, but other than that, their most dependable source of points has been Ewan in sprint finishes. Given the nature of bunch sprints, that’s a big gamble, and one which ultimately indicates a failure to appreciate the value, from a UCI points perspective, of race results.

It may surprise you to discover that a single Grand Tour stage victory is worth only 120 points. Compared to single races, that’s less than finishing eighth in any of the Monuments, Gent-Wevelgem, and even the GPs of Montreal and Quebec. It’s the same as finishing fifth in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad among other races. Incidentally, that was where Ewan’s team-mate Victor Campenaerts finished in this year’s edition of the race.

Also-ran status in fairly low level stage races would be worth far more to the team than Grand Tour stages had they scored as little as a seventh at any of Paris-Nice, the Dauphine, Tours de Suisse or Romandie, or Tirreno Adriatico they would be better off than they are today.

But that’s not what the team has focused on. It’s not where their priorities have lain. Instead, they’ve been entirely dependent on an immensely talented, still pretty young, somewhat inexperienced sprinter.

Even If the 27-year-old had been having the season of his life, Lotto-Soudal wouldn’t be lying comfortably in mid-table. They would be, at best, a few places higher. It would be enough for a short-term reprieve, as it would knock BikeExchange Jayco into the drop zone, but it should hardly be what a team like that is striving for.

What’s more, that level of dependency, and the pressure that comes with it, can hardly be helping Ewan himself.

It’s not that he doesn’t have the legs. He certainly spoke highly of his form before the Tour de France. When he's had the chance to go for it, he’s looked every bit as fast as ever, he’s just not been in the right place, at the right time, doing the right things. When he is, Ewan is unmatchable. This season, he has been more than easy to match. Has the entire weight of the team's future gotten too much for him? Only he can really know whether it has.

As things stand, he is still in the Tour de France. He could yet win on the Champs Elysees a week on Sunday. Even if he does, though it might look flash, it won’t change very much.

When it comes down to it, in elite sport, you make your own luck. Lotto-Soudal have done everything they can to make as little for themselves as they can.

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