Lotto Soudal jump onto the Jumbo train to deliver Ewan's first Tour de France win

Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) took his first Tour de France stage win in Toulouse on Wednesday, managing to time his bike throw to perfection to edge past Dylan Groenewegen (Jumbo-Visma) in a photo finish. Ewan's teammate Roger Kluge was visibly beaming outside the team bus, but instead of playing his usual lead-out role in dropping Ewan off with a few hundred metres to go, Kluge instead left Ewan on Groenwegen's wheel with two kilometres still to race.

The decision was partly pre-mediated but also in part down to the duo’s teammate Jasper De Buyst crashing with around 15 kilometres left to race, causing Ewan to lose contact with the peloton at the sharp end of the stage.

After dropping back to tow Ewan back to the bunch, Kluge then shepherded Ewan onto the wheel of the four-man Jumbo-Visma lead out, which Kluge admits is the strongest at the race.

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"The final 15 kilometres were pretty interesting," Kluge explained to Cyclingnews outside his team bus after the stage. "We were caught behind a crash and lost a lot of positions, and then I waited for Caleb and I got him back on the wheels with probably 10 kilometres to go and from there we, we had to move on again and move up.

"He was on the limit and sometimes we had to rest a little bit," Kluge said. "There was the little climb with five kilometres to go and luckily, they didn’t take it full and from there, after I dropped him on the downhill to the Jumbo-Visma train and kept him there for another kilometre until the last two, and then I was gone, I was over but he kept the position and did a perfect sprint.

"I think everybody could see from the first week [Jumbo-Visma] have a super strong team, with the strongest lead out. We have a strong team as well, with a strong lead out, but we learned after a couple of stages we just need to drop him off in the right position. We don’t need to give him the perfect lead-out because he can jump from the wheels and that makes him a super fast sprinter.

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com