Two years after Michael Matthews secured his breakthrough Grand Tour stage win in the 2013 Vuelta a España, Orica-GreenEdge's Caleb Ewan followed his teammate's wheeltracks with a classy uphill victory against John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin) and Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo).
Curiously enough, Matthews victory, taken in a chaotic bunch sprint against Argentina's Maximiliano Richeze and Belgian Gianni Meersman, also came on stage 5 of the Vuelta. And like Matthews two years ago, the Vuelta's is Ewan's first ever Grand Tour stage victory.
"Michael has won a lot of Grand Tour stages since then so it would be an honour to be following on his footsteps and doing kind of what he's done," Ewan said after securing Orica-GreenEdge's second 2015 Vuelta win in four days. "Hopefully this will be the first one of many in my career, too. It feels very special and follow in his footsteps is a pretty good thing for me."
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Just 21 years old and a U-23 silver medallist last year in Ponferrada's road race, Ewan's victory was all the more impressive as he managed to fend off two established sprinters of the calibre of Degenkolb and Sagan as he powered to his tenth victory of 2015.
"It was a toughie," he said, describing the twisting uphill grind of a finish in western Andalucia, ridden off in temperatures of around 35 degrees celsius.
"To be honest I didn't know what to expect haven't won a WorldTour race before and I knew it was going to be pretty tough, but at the end there when your team commit 100 percent and believe in you so much, you start to believe in yourself. The way they delivered me perfectly to the foot of the climb was awesome.
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