Australian sprinting wunderkind Caleb Ewan appears to be the real deal, and he was in position to beat out all of the world’s best sprinters this morning at the Abu Dhabi Tour. Instead, he learned a tough lesson about celebrating after you cross the line, not before, when someone can still catch you.
Ewan is young and strong and I’m sure he’ll learn from this and go on to roast the competition this season, but oh man, what an embarrassing way to lose a race. As the slo-mo footage of the finish shows, Ewan had Marcel Kittel beat until the last second, when Kittel got him with the bike throw.
After the race, Ewan called it a “massive rookie mistake” on his part, and sprinting veterans like Kittel and Mark Cavendish were sympathetic to his plight. It seems like losing this way is just something that young sprinters do as they’re coming up.