ROBBIE MCEWEN'S BEST YEAR - BACK UP TO SPEED

In 2002 the star sprinter Robbie McEwen wasted no time making a mark at his new team and, writes Chris Marshall-Bell, that was just the beginning

- Chris Marshall-Bell

It was six in the morning when Christophe Sercu’s phone rang. “Walter?” the LottoAdecco manager wearily queried from his bed in Belgium to his director Sportif Walter Planckaert. “Morning. Robbie won today.”

The same phone call repeated itself two days later. And the day after. Oh, and two days after that. Robbie McEwen’s first week riding with his new team had yielded a quartet of victories at the 2002 Tour Down Under in just six stages. “Walter rang me every morning from Australia saying that he won again,” Sercu says. “Every time it was so very early. So early. But he was having an impact already.”

ACHIEVEMENTS

Career palmarès

12x – Tour de France stages

3x – Tour de France green jerseys

12x – Giro d’Italia stages

12x – Tour Down Under stages

5x – Paris-Bruxelles

3x – Australian road race champion

8x – Ronde van Nederland stages

7x – Tour de Suisse stages

Indeed. Before McEwen raced in the red of the Belgian team with his new team-mates, he had already won four times: twice at the Geelong Bay Crits and in becoming Australian national road and criterium champion. “I hadn’t lost in the Lotto jersey before I raced with my new team. I was in red hot form. I felt so incredible,” he recalls.