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By winning the 4th and last stage of the Tour de Wallonie Picarde (the former Circuit Franco Belge), Robbie McEwen re-took the yellow jersey and is the overall winner. McEwen, who won 12 stages in the Tour de France as well as in the Tour of Italy, won this stage race previously in 2002. 

“This was not expected today,” said race winner Robbie McEwen.  “This was a hard stage with seven climbs of the Col de la Croix de Jubaru.  Despite the heat I felt good today and actually felt better and better as the stage went on.  I knew that I could take the overall victory by winning the stage and when Veelers or Sutton were not in the top three.  And that’s what happened. To be honest, this was an easy sprint for me. I choose the right wheel, that of Sutton and could easily pass him. This proves I’m still there in cycling.”
 
In Tournai he took his fifth victory of the season for Team RadioShack, but for the 39-year-old rider, the season is not over yet.  “Oh, yes, the season is not over yet.  I hope I can show the same fast legs in Paris-Tours. That would be nice. I’ve never won that race.”

Team Director Dirk Demol added,  “Again I have big respect for the rider Robbie McEwen.  I admire his motivation.  January through October, it doesn’t matter for McEwen. There was nice work from the team too.   We didn’t have to defend the leader’s jersey but we were in all of the breaks. First Shalunov was in a break of 11.  Then he was alone for 30k.  In the end Kwiatkowski and Lequatre were also in breaks.  But it ended in a sprint and Robbie created the crowning moment.  We are very satisfied.”

After the 2011 season Robbie McEwen will relocate back to Australia and will start his last season as he always has. “I will do some Australian races, followed by Qatar or Oman and the Flemish classics. Then it will be over and out,” McEwen concluded.   

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Team RadioShack’s Robbie McEwen seems to like the races in the French speaking part of Belgium. After winning a stage in this year’s Tour de Wallonie, he won today’s opening stage of the Circuit Franco-Belge (or Tour de Wallonie Picarde), a four-day stage race around the Belgian-French border. In a mass sprint he was clearly faster than last year’s overall winner Adam Blyth (Omega Pharma – Lotto) and Rüdiger Selig (Leopard Trek).

“My teammates brought me in a perfect position,”  explained Robbie McEwen (39). “Sky was pulling for Russell Downing. Behind their trio of Sutton, Henderson and Downing, Blyth was there with his teammate Vandousselaere.  I was in the wheel of Blyth who accelerated. I could easily go around him and his teammate. My sprint was very regular, no explosiveness, but I continuously accelerated.  I had to as the last 150 meters were really uphill. I could keep up my pace and won quite easily. This makes me happy. My third victory of the seaon.”

“It is always a pleasure to work with Robbie McEwen,” said Team Director Dirk Demol. “Despite his age that lends to less explosiveness, he never gives up and is always fighting for his position. He is an example for all other riders. The team also believed in him and worked a lot for him.”

“With Sam Bewley, Michal Kwiatkowski and Gregory Rast I still had three teammates with me,” continued McEwen. “Rast and Kwiatkowski brought me through the last kilometer and then Kwiatkowski guided me to the 6th position to start the sprint. An ideal situation for me.”

The first stage from Mouscron to Péruwelz started very fast. The average speed the first hour of the race was more than 50 k/h. After that, three riders (Ronan Van Zandbeek (Skil-Shimano), David Lelay (Ag2r-La Mondiale) and Jonathan Dewitte (Wallonie Bruxelles-Crédit Agricole)) managed to stay away from the peloton but were finally caught in the local laps.

Robbie McEwen starts tomorrow in the yellow leader’s jersey in stage 2 to Poperinge. “The overall victory is not the main objective here as we came for stage wins, but you never know. Most important is that I get ready for Paris-Tours, my last objective of the season.”

Result Stage 1: Mouscron-Péruwelz, 178.2 km
1 Robbie McEwen (Team RadioShack) 4:03:18;  2 Adam Blyth;  3 Rüdiger Selig;  4 Nacer Bouhanni;  5 Michael Van Staeyen;  6 Sep Vanmarcke;  7 Tom Veelers;  8 Russell Downing;  9 Koen de Kort;  10 Nikolas Maes

General Classification after Stage 1:
1 Robbie McEwen (Team RadioShack) 4:03:18;  2 Adam Blyth 00:04;  3 Ronan van Zandbeek;  4 Rüdiger Selig 00:06;  5 David Lelay 0:07;  6 Arnaud Gérard 0:09;  7 Nacer Bouhanni 0:10;  8 Michael Van Staeyen;  9 Sep Vanmarcke;  10 Tom Veelers

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26 July 2011 –  Team RadioShack’s Robbie McEwen (39) took his first victory of the season by beating Alexander Kristoff and Yauheni Hutarovich in a mass sprint in the fourth stage of the Tour de Wallonie.

“The guys did a really good job staying in the front and keeping myself and Manuel Cardoso out of the wind and up where we needed to be,” explained a happy McEwen after a fast stage with the finish in Mouscron. “Towards the end and in the final, Bjørn Selander did a good job for me, keeping me in position and out of the wind and following my instructions right until the last 1.5 kilometer where I took Bennati’s wheel on the lead out of Leopard-Trek. I was originally going to pull the sprint for Cardoso since the team worked for me yesterday and it didn’t work out.  But I was in the perfect position and Manuel lost some positions at the crucial moment, so we had to cut to plan B. That plan was pretty good.”

Team director Viatcheslav Ekimov agreed.  “I see a very motivated Team RadioShack in this race. There is no pressure but they all want to show something. The team has to leave behind the bad luck we had in the Tour de France. Earlier this week Ben Hermans was already close to a stage victory too. This is nice.”

Robbie McEwen is a triple winner of the Tour de France's green jersey sprinter’s classification. He has twelve stage wins in the Tour the France, another twelve in the Tour of Italy, plus five wins in Paris-Brussels. This season he aims to win the rainbow jersey for Team RadioShack at the World Championships in Copenhagen in September.

“I didn’t see much of the Tour de France as I was concentrated on my own training,” continued McEwen. “I just trained at home easy for a week, then I went to the South of France and trained a lot in the hills. Just four hours a day, medium tempo, just building up my condition. A week before this race, back in Belgium I trained in the hills of the Flemish Ardennes and planned to used this Tour de Wallonie to get some rhythm back again. Apparently I found my rhythm quite quickly. This is promising for the next couple of months. I am still very ambitious.  Since the beginning of the season the World Championships in Copenhagen is a big objective. I think I can do a big preparation by doing this race and races like Eneco Tour, Hamburg, Plouay and Fourmies. I just need to be selected now. Hopefully that will be the case.”

Result Stage 4: Engien-Mouscron, 151.6 km
1 Robbie McEwen (Team RadioShack) 3:21:53;  2 Alexander Kristoff;  3 Yauheni Hutarovich;  4 Michael Van Staeyen;  5 Kenny Dehaes;  6 Kristof Goddaert;  7 Jonas Vangenechten;  8 Greg Van Avermaet;  9 Daniele Bennati;  10 Joost van Leijen

General Classification after four stages:
1 Greg Van Avermaet 17:30:08;  2 Joost van Leijen;  3 Ben Hermans (Team RadioShack) 0:16;  4 Nikolay Trusov 0:17;  5 Michal Golas 0:20;  6 Edwig Cammaerts;  7 Thomas Degand;  8 Bert De Waele;  9 Koen de Kort 0:2;  10 Nikolas Maes 0:26

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Q. Markel, congratulations on your win in the Ruta del Sol! How did you feel when you got the win?

Courtesy Jamies Ford - CycleSportNews

CycleSportNews.com founder Jamie Ford caught up with Robbie McEwen at the recent Pegasus Training camp on the Sunshine Coast. 

 

While over looking the beautiful Noosa Springs golf course,  Robbie gave him an insight into 2011 and the new beginnings of an exciting time with the Australian Pro Continental squad.

 

CSN:

 

Robbie, is it fair to say you had a reasonable season for 2010? 

 

McEWEN:

 

I’d say the 2010 season was very up and down for me. I had a good start in the Tour Down Under and ran 4th overall. 

 

My aim was to get through the 1st half of the season and manage my left leg, which I broke in the course of 2009.

 

So it was all about building up strength again and getting consistency and building towards my major goal of the season, which was the Tour de France and the World Championships. 

 

CSN:

 

How did the Tour go for you?

 

McEWEN:

 

Ah the Tour de France didn’t go well. I had some really some heavy crashes! One was on stage 2 when I lost a lot of blood and then had some complications from the tetanus injection.

 

Then a few days later, I had a nasty crash after the finish line. After rolling through after the line, a camera operator from a  European television station decided he needed to be standing in the middle of the road.

 

I was coming thru after the sprint at 60k an hour and we hit head on and that effectively ruined my whole tour. After that I had a bad tour. And then of course I had a big disappointment at not being selected for the World Championship in Geelong. 

 

CSN:

 

The rest of the 2010? 

 

McEWEN:

 

Other than that, it was quite good. I got a really nice win in August in the Eneco Tour.

Also during the Giro d’Italia I had some really good stages on the bike , I felt everything was coming back together like it should as far as my left leg was concerned. 

 

The other thing I really got out of 2010, was building up a lot of resistance again and a lot of racing condition, there were so many race days!  I think all the race days I missed by being injured in 2009, I certainly made up for it in 2010!  I had 116 race days where most guys will only do about 75. 

 

So it was a really, really busy year, but I think  it will stand me in good stead for 2011.

 

 I’m just getting back into training now and today was my 1st 100 km day. 

 

We’re getting towards the end of November now so there is no panic yet. I’ll build it up to December and plan to hit the ground running and hopefully that will be the Tour Down Under in January. 

 

We are just waiting for the organisers to ring the team and say, ‘You’re in the tour… welcome’  

 

CSN:

 

So as far as early season goals go, obviously if the team makes it into the Tour Down Under it would be great, but after that… where do you see yourself? 

 

McEWEN:

 

Before that we’ll be riding the National Championships with the Australian guys… about 11 Australians!

 

So we’ll try and make an impact in both the criterium and time trial and of course the road race, so in all 3.

 

It would be great to be able to take a National Championship jersey into the team and across to Europe. 

 

But yeah, as I said, hopefully the Tour down Under and then add to that, we’ll have a team going to the tours of Qatar and Omah.

 

There’ll be another group of guys doing the Tour of Malaysia and yet another group of guys which includes our South Africans, of which we have 4, being home to ride their National Champs and the Tour of South Africa (at the end of February / beginning of March).

 

Then we’ll have Spain for the rest of March into April.

 

So far we’ve got a couple of invites to races which we really want to do, at pro-tour level, so you know, we’ve got wild cards for those races like the Tour in Africa, its really pleasing to be invited to a tour like that. 

 

And for the rest, we are at that time of the year when the Wild Cards are starting to get decided for a few races.

 

However we will probably have to wait more towards the end of January to know about some of the races say for the end of March. 

 

Like the Turino or Paris-Nice etc 

 

As for Qatar and Oman, these races are organized by ASO as is the Tour de France and Paris Nice, so by performing well in Qatar we would put ourselves in a position to get an invite to Paris Nice as well. 

 

So we’ve just got to come out firing and really prove ourselves and give ourselves some credibility by good results. 

 

CSN:

 

What are your thoughts and feelings about not being included in the worlds?

 

McEWEN:

 

I’m still disappointed I wasn’t there, we’ll never know if I wouldn’t have made it to the finish of that group or not, but the thing I was counting on was a group of 25 or 40 riders… and it turned out to be 30 riders sprinting for the win!

 

And the way things were going I was really confident of being in the 30 man group by the finish. Seeing the way it turned out, it was kind of painful to watch… but I’m trying to move past that. 

 

I’m trying to focus on what I’ll be doing in 2011 and there’s another Worlds next year of course (2011) in Copenhagen, Denmark. And I really want to be part of that team as the course is even more suited to my abilities. So yeah, I’m banking on being there.   

 

CSN:

 

You seem with age your sprinting style may have changed… become more of an endurance sprinter perhaps?

  

McEWEN:

 

The thing that changed the most about my sprinting over the last 18 months was the broken leg and the tendon injury that I obtained in the Tour of Belgium in May 2009 – until then, really nothing had changed. With the injury I had a huge battle to get myself back on the bike and capable of riding races. 

 

That was almost like a win in itself. And it took me half of 2010 to really get some consistency and some real power back in my left leg. 

 

In the second part of the season I was going really, really well!

 

So now I’m looking ahead and believe in 2011 I’ll be better than I was through the whole last 12 or 16 months.  So we’ll see then if much has changed in the sprints in Tour Down Under or… obviously there’s always guys coming through like Cavendish, like Farrar, like Greipel who are very good athletes and great sprinters, and I realize I’m not getting any younger but I think I’m still competitive.

 

CSN:

 

Do you think there will be much fire between Greipel and Cavendish in the Tour Down Under? (It will be the first time the 2 have faced off on different teams – Ed.) 

 

McEWEN:

 

Cav always brings a bit of fire, I think he’s almost half made out of fire! I think it will be pretty exciting to watch. Those guys are already confirmed for the Tour Down Under everybody’s talking to the media about it. “The duel between Greipel, Cavendish and Farrar and you know, I hope our team gets a start just so I can get in there with them and hopefully have a nice photo of me crossing the line with those three behind me (haha). 

 

CSN:

 

With the new team, do you think there is a chance there are too many riders with the same ability… too many sprinters perhaps?  

 

McEWEN:

 

No I think the make up of the 2011 team is a good one. With myself and Jonothan Cantwell and we’ve got a few guys who are not real sprinters but they’re fast guys who will really be able to provide a good lead-out.

 

Clinton Avery, Jay Thompson, Bernie Sulzberger, Aaron Kemps – he’s another great sprinter. 

 

But it will generally be decided on the day, in the race itself. We would work out what we would be doing and for who, and obviously we’d be riding a double program. So it would be good to have maybe a fast guy in both races and see if we can support that with the lead-out guys.  

 

CSN:

 

Have you been doing any lead-out training with the new team?  Any sprint specific training? 

 

McEWEN:

 

No, not as yet, its only November and this is our first time together, to get to know each other. But we are starting to think about the lineup of what we might do for the sprint.. who is going to go where and do what for who, and that sort of stuff. So we’re conscious of it, but with this … really, you got to dial that in during races, when you’re under pressure. 

 

So we’ll have a few practice runs. We’ll have another training camp in January (2011) with the team and that’s when it will start to get more active on that front. Really start to tune it. 

 

CSN:

 

Another question you may not want to be asked, but where do you see Robbie McEwen in 2 or 3 years time?  

 

McEWEN:

 

On the beach!!  In 2 or 3 years time… well you know… you can’t be a professional sportsman for ever!  I’m 38 going on 39 and I realize… well I would imagine 2011 will be my last year racing. 

 

After that, I’d like to stay in contact with the team in some sort of position, not a full time and not a European base, but I’d like to be involved with the team and certainly help the team develop.

 

Help so that we have an Aussie pro-tour team riding in the Tour De France, with an automatic start and all that sort of thing. 

 

Part of me wanting to sign with this team in the first place was I wanted to be involved and get in from the start.

 

2011 is going to be my last opportunity to do that. I’m excited about being part of it, even after my active riding career, to still fulfil a role within the team.  But I do see myself staying in Australia. 

 

CSN:

 

So you see yourself in Australia? Will you be bringing all the family and basing them in Australia? 

 

McEWEN:

 

Yeah, we’ll live on the Gold Coast. We’ve just finished building a house on the Gold Coast and just moved in. We’ll be away for this cycling season, but we’re going to settle in Australia. 

 

But like I said, I will have contact and play a role within the professional team of Pegasus Sports. I think also, fully help out and see how everything’s going on a domestic front, with the younger team, where we can help mould the younger riders ready to make that next step.  

 

CSN:

We’ll be wrapping up here as I know you have to go play some golf with the boys! You must be incredibly excited that in a country ranked 3rd or 4th in the world for so many years is finally having its own professional cycling team!  I mean this should have happened years ago right?  

 

McEWEN:

 

Yeah, it really is time that Australia has a top level team and now the opportunity is there. It’s all happening and hopefully we’ll get support from the fans and a few more sponsors.

 

We also expect other Aussie riders to realize that this is something really exciting for Aussie cycling, and they should also get involved. Australia deserves to have a top level team that we hope takes on the best riders available, so hopefully a few more will become available and we can add them to the team.  

 

CSN:

 

So no Robbie McEwen clothing line, or McEwen bikes on the cards for the future? 

 

McEWEN:

 

No, (haha) nothing like that yet. But who knows, eh?  


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