'It can really push me along' - How a velodrome comeback is making Caleb Ewan faster on the road

When he was 17 years old, Caleb Ewan won the first and only world title of his career. It came on the track, in the omnium at the 2011 Junior World Championships, held inside Moscow’s suburban velodrome. A star was born, many thought at the time, and they were right to an extent. Ewan would go on to earn 65 victories on the road, including stage wins at all three Grand Tours, but his track days would effectively stop there.

That is, until now.

With the help of his new team, Ineos Grenadiers, the 30-year-old is rekindling his teenage love for track racing. It comes as part of a bid to help him find an edge for his resurgent road career. This Friday, he’s set to compete in the Good Friday meet at London’s Lee Valley Velodrome – his first track event since he can remember.

The return to the boards, Ewan said, has been eye-opening.

“It’s almost like a completely different sport,” he told Cycling Weekly at the opening of SunGod's new London store earlier this month. “I did a lot of track when I was younger, but since I turned pro, I’ve done basically nothing.

“After years and years of road, especially as a sprinter, I think you wear down your sprint, doing Grand Tours and all the road kilometres that you do. That fast-twitch kind of goes, so the track’s kind of to kick that back in. That’s the idea.”

It is not uncommon for road riders to swap between track and tarmac. SD Worx-Protime's Lotte Kopecky, for example, has won six track world titles, while Ewan's Ineos Grenadiers teammate Filippo Ganna is an Olympic gold medallist.

The plan to re-introduce the Australian back to the boards came courtesy of Mehdi Kordi, Ineos Grenadiers’ new head of performance sport and innovation. Kordi acted until last summer as the head coach of the highly successful Dutch national sprint team, helping to guide Harrie Lavreysen to three gold medals at the Olympics in Paris.

Almost immediately after Ewan joined the British squad, Kordi took him training at the Manchester Velodrome.

“I got my head kicked in a bit,” Ewan laughed. “It was three days of just track, so it was quite intense.”

Sharing the boards at the same time was Great Britain’s men’s sprint squad, the Olympic silver medallists. It didn’t take long before the Australian tried to pit himself against them.

“I said to Mehdi, ‘Can I do a few starts with them?’” he recalled. “On the road, we do something similar, not usually standing starts like that, but a few rolling starts in a big gear. It’s a similar type of effort. To have the opportunity to go up against those guys in something like that, it can really push me along.

“I was chatting to Matty Richo [Matthew Richardson] a bit, who was an Aussie, now a Brit. But track sprinting and road sprinting are completely different. The numbers that those guys do compared to us is much bigger. Obviously they can focus just on the sprint part, whereas we have to focus on getting over the climbs and getting through three weeks of a Grand Tour, on top of the sprint as well.”

Weeks after his track comeback in Manchester, Ewan attended a team camp in Mallorca, where he combined his road training with more work inside the velodrome.

He then made his season debut at Coppi et Bartali, winning on his first attempt in his new team colours. A second win soon followed, this time at Itzulia Basque Country, his first WorldTour victory in three years.

“I guess, in a way, I feel like I’m back at the top level,” he told reporters at the finish line.

It would be a leap, of course, to pin all of the success on his track riding, but the ground work won't been a waste. Does he plan to keep it up? “It’s definitely something that I’ll continue on in the future, maybe do a few races,” Ewan told Cycling Weekly. “I think it can definitely complement your road [racing].”

To this day, the 2011 Junior World Championships in Moscow remain the Australian's last major track competition. They might not be his last.