Caleb Yuan (Lotto Doustony) fought hard to break his time on stage 12 of the 2023 Tour de France in a grueling race, but the race came to an end on stage 13 to the Grand Colombier.

The Australian was seen holding his abdomen behind the peloton, and shortly afterwards an announcement was made over the race radio that Ewan had abandoned the Tour de France.

It was a hard-fought second day for Ewan, who dropped to the tail of the peloton as soon as the flag dropped on stage 12 and a 90-km breakaway began. Fortunately, Lotto Destony's teammate Jasper de Buisto helped him through one of the toughest days of racing so far.

They finished just six minutes shy of the 44-minute time limit, and Ewan and his lead-out man finished arm-in-arm in Belleville-en-Beaujolais after a lonely battle at the back of the race. Lotto-Dostny's Twitter video showed the two returning to the team bus, exhausted.

"Today sucked ...... But we managed," Ewan briefly summarized on Instagram, thanking De Baisto for getting him home 10 minutes after the large group, which included most of the sprinters, arrived.

De Baist's roommate at the Tour, Victory Kampenaerts (Lotto Doustony), was one of the breakaway contenders and eventually finished 10th after experiencing non-stop racing firsthand.

"It was incredibly hard," Campenaerts recalled of the stage. "Two days ago [stage 10] was one of the hardest stages I've ever ridden, and a lot of the riders agreed it was one of the hardest stages of everyone's career.

The sprinters face three tough stages before the next rest day, but today's stage finish on the Grand Colombier is probably the easiest of the three tests, with a relatively easy parcours awaiting before the summit finish. [5 mountain categories, with elevations exceeding 4,000 meters, the difficulty increases exponentially with each passing kilometer.

Two leading sprinters have already been ruled out of the 2023 Tour de France. Mark Cavendish (Astana Kazakstan), who broke his collarbone on stage 8, and Fabio Jacobsen (Soudal-Quick Step), who did not start stage 12 because he did not recover from an injury sustained on stage 4.

Jakobsen had set a time two days before abandoning on stage 10 in a group that included Ewan and the lead-out riders from each team, but he and Ewan were unable to compete properly in the group sprint on stage 11 and both finished outside the top 10.