Caleb Ewan is supposedly under contract with Jayco AlUla for the 2025 season, but the 30-year-old Australian has been conspicuously absent from Jayco’s recent press materials, the team’s social media, and, perhaps most strangely, even its website. As of earlier this week, Ewan was included in the catalog of riders in the “2025 men’s team” page, but his bio page has since been removed from the roster lineup.
As reported by Daniel Benson on his Substack, Ewan was not present at the team’s December training camp. And Ewan is not slated to race Australia’s Road Nationals this week, nor the fast-approaching Tour Down Under. As Jayco AlUla said in its TDU roster announcement a week ago, while the focus is on the overall with Luke Plapp and Mauro Schmid, it’s Campbell Stewart – who led Ewan out last year – who “will be an option for the bunch sprints.”
Ewan’s absence would mark the first time since 2015, his first full pro season, that he has not raced his home tour, where he has won nine stages (the TDU was not held in 2021 and 2022).
Jayco AlUla general manager Brent Copeland declined the opportunity to comment when contacted by Escape, but something certainly seems amiss between Ewan and his team. It is the second time in three years Ewan and an employer have been at loggerheads.
Sources closely connected in Australian pro cycling told Escape Collective that the current issue arose last year, when Astana Qazaqstan approached Jayco AlUla about buying out Ewan’s contract for 2025 and slotting the sprinter in to replace the retiring Mark Cavendish.
The deal ultimately collapsed, but not before Jayco was close to signing a replacement; with the transfer off and the maximum number of riders under contract for 2025, Jayco couldn’t sign another rider unless a spot opened up.
Multiple sources have suggested to Escape the possibility of legal proceedings between Ewan and Jayco AlUla. The team is expected to make an official statement about Ewan’s position in the near future.
Once among the best sprinters in the sport, Ewan turned pro with the GreenEdge organisation – then racing as Orica-GreenEdge – at the end of 2014 and spent several seasons there, racking up stage wins at the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España along the way. He left the team for Lotto Soudal in 2019 and had success at the start of his time there, adding five Tour de France stages to his palmarès in 2019 and 2020 and signing an extension in 2021.
As it turned out, 2021 would be his last year winning a Grand Tour stage. His last WorldTour-level win, a stage of Tirreno-Adriatico, came in 2022, and along with the drop in his results, his relationship with Lotto soured.
Rider and team ultimately agreed on an early termination of his contract, and for 2024 Ewan went back to the organization where he started his career. In his absence, Jayco had signed Dylan Groenewegen, and as team director Matt White told Rupert Guinness a year ago, the fit between Ewan and the Dutchman wasn’t perfect.
“I wouldn’t say they are friends but [there is] a lot of respect between the two,” White said at the time. Jayco mapped out a program where the two sprinters would not overlap at races, but that meant no Tour in 2024 for Ewan, with the 2025 edition TBD.
Ewan was optimistic in early 2024, but raced sparingly after the Giro. Even with two wins in late July and early August, he was not selected for the Vuelta as White had planned last January. While Ewan was expected to ride on with Jayco for 2025, having been so conspicuously left out of important early races and dropped from the team’s online roster, it is increasingly unclear whether that will happen.
According to Benson, another team that briefly showed interest in Ewan was Ineos Grenadiers, which has an open roster spot after the December departure of Tom Pidcock. Whether the talks with Astana or Ineos have been revived is yet to be seen, but Ewan’s future with his current team is, at best, uncertain.
Matt de Neef contributed reporting to this story.
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