(Originally published in the May 27 to June 2, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle ---
a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines ---
by Sly L. Quintos, Associate Editor.)
AFTER 17 years of getting paid to race a bicycle, Australian Robbie McEwen bowed out of competitive bicycle racing at the conclusion of the Amgen Tour of California last week to pursue a coaching career.
With his retirement, Australia lost one of its role models and a void has been created that will be extremely difficult to fill.
As a triple winner of the Tour de France's Green Jersey sprinters' classification, he was, at his peak, considered one of the fastest sprinters in the world.
Born in Brisbane, Queensland on June 24, 1972, the former Junior Australian BMX Champion McEwen started road cycling in 1992 at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. The first signs of his sprinting prowess on the international stage were at the “Peace Race”, winning three stages for the Australian National team.
He competed in the road race at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, USA where he finished 23rd and at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney where he finished 19th. He was also included on the Australian team for the 1994 Union Cycliste Internationalé or UCI (English: International Cycling Union) Road Cycling World Championships in Italy and in 2002 in Belgium where he won a silver medal. He was again selected for Australian road race team at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. He was named 2002 Australian Cyclist of the Year, 2002 Male Road Cyclist of the Year and 1999 Australia Male Road Cyclist of the Year.
McEwen has participated in the Tour de France 12 times between 1991 and 2010 (except in 2001 and 2009). He logged 12 stage wins in the Tour de France to eclipse Italians Gino Bartali (1936, 1937 and 1946 Tour de France champion) and Mario Cippolini who won the fastest massed-start stage in the 1999 Tour de France (194.5 km) at 50.4 kph, sprinter Eric Zabel of Germany, and Spaniard Migue Indurain (five-time Tour de France champion). Belgian Eddy Merckx (who won the Tour de France five times) holds the title of most Tour de France stage wins at 34.
McEwen’s 2007 Tour de France Stage 1 sprint win was seen as remarkable as he had crashed with 20 km to go. He landed on his wrist and elbow but with the help of his team he clawed his way back to the bunch to win the sprint by over a bike length. The injuries he sustained from the crash did not prevent him from continuing but eventually he was forced out of the race when the Tour entered the Mountains and he failed to finish stage eight within the time limit.
In 2002, McEwen became the first Australian to win the Green Jersey Overall Points (or Sprint) Classification of the Tour de France. By 2006, McEwen had won the sprinters’ green jersey points competition three times in the Tour de France (in 2002, 2004 and again in 2006) defeating rivals such as fellow Australians Baden Cooke and Stuart O’Grady, and international competitors like the German legend Erik Zabel and Thor Hushovd of Norway.
McEwen's first win in 2002 saw him take the green jersey from Zabel, with O’Grady third and Cooke fourth. In 2003, Cooke won the green jersey with McEwen second, Zabel third and O’Grady seventh.
In 2004, McEwen won the green jersey for a second time, defeating Hushovd and Erik Zabel, with O'Grady 4th and Cooke 12th. McEwen had fractured two vertebrae early in the Tour and had ridden the race in pain, but despite this, three days after the Tour de France he came second to Lance Armstrong in a criterium in the Netherlands.
In 2005, McEwen came in third, behind Hushovd and O’Grady. McEwen won his third and final green jersey in 2006, this time with Zabel second and Hushovd third. McEwen was out of the top ten in 2007, placed eighth in 2008 and missed the Tour de France due to injury in 2009.*
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