Lotto Teammates share stories of challenging times with the now-retired Ewan: "Then the only option is to change teams"

De Buyst knows Ewan well as his former lead-out man for the sprinter. But even he did not see this decision coming. “If he had made this decision four months ago, it would not have surprised me," he told Het Nieuwsblad. "We stayed in close contact after he left Lotto, and I know how difficult it has sometimes been for him. But now that he has demonstrated his capabilities again, his decision surprises me."

However, in hindsight, his former teammate acknowledges that it is not an unreasonable decision. "He has had two challenging years in terms of team dynamics. First, he left Lotto, which was very difficult for him. Then he moved to Jayco AlUla, but there he clashed with Dylan Groenewegen," says the Belgian. "Caleb absolutely wanted to be the team's number one sprinter because the only thing that mattered to him were the big wins. Stage victories in the Tour and the Giro. He felt that wasn't going to happen at Jayco."

That's why Ewan wanted to leave his old love, where he started his professional career. "But things went wrong there, and in the end, Jayco terminated his contract. INEOS signed him, but those two difficult years meant he no longer enjoyed it." As his former sports director, Marc Sergeant also experienced the challenging aspects of Ewan's personality. "He often gave the outside world the impression that nothing bothered him. 'Nobody can touch me.' However, when you were alone with him in a room, you could see that he was just human with his own issues."

De Buyst agrees. Ewan's first impression is not representative of the person he is. "Caleb has a certain self-confidence slash arrogance about him, or at least that's how he can come across, which makes people think he doesn't care about anything. But he's not like that at all. Caleb is an emotional person, a real family man, who is often misunderstood. He definitely has his heart in the right place. But expressing himself in that way has sometimes led to conflicts."

Sergeant remembers the 2021 Giro d'Italia, where Ewan competed as a sprinter. Things didn't go well, and the sports director had to come to Italy to calm things down. "Caleb was unhappy with his teammates. The atmosphere was completely ruined. They told me that Caleb even sat separately at dinner. When I asked him about it, he started pouring his heart out about everything going wrong in the race. "Well, the only option is to change teams," I laughed. 'Yeah, that's what my wife says," he replied. I told him he should wait a while and that everything would be fine.

"You had to be strict with Caleb sometimes but also listen to what he had to say. The next morning, he apologized to his teammates on the bus and expressed his confidence in them. That day, he won the stage, and two days later, he won again. And then he was happy again. It wasn't the only time I had to talk to Caleb. The riders knew what was happening and came straight to me: 'Did you manage to get him to change his mind?"

"Caleb set the bar so high for himself, but he also felt so much pressure that he reacted strongly when something didn't go his way," De Buyst adds. "And sometimes that wasn't entirely justified. But that wasn't because he's a jerk or a bad person. He was under tremendous pressure from us because the team depended on his results. That wasn't always easy within the team, and Caleb and I often clashed, but I always enjoyed working with him. The last six months he was with the team were perhaps difficult. But we still get along well and are still good friends to this day."