Tour de France sprint specialist Caleb Ewan retires from cycling at age 30

MONACO (AP) — Sprint specialist Caleb Ewan on Tuesday ended his cycling career that peaked with five Tour de France stage wins including one on the Champs-Élysées.

The 30-year-old Australian’s surprise announcement came despite reviving his results this season with British team Ineos Grenadiers.

“I felt like myself again and I felt respected again,” Ewan wrote in a farewell message on his Instagram account. “For that, I can’t thank them enough.”

Ewan won three stages in the 2019 Tour, including the final stage in Paris, and two more the next year. He also had five career stage wins at the Giro d’Italia and one at the Spanish Vuelta.

He was twice runner-up in the Milan-San Remo one-day classic, the closest he came to winning a Monument race.

Ewan said he was leaving cycling on his own terms after falling a little out of love with the sport that “once felt like everything to me.”

“The truth is that even when I crossed the line first, that feeling — the one you chase for years — faded quicker than it used to,” he wrote on Instagram.

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports