The shock was on the face of Thomas Champion and in the voices of the Eurosport commentators when Matthew Riccitello came sprinting up the final metres of the Giro d’Italia’s stage 20 time trial.
Riccitello obliterated the fastest time set by the Frenchman, going nearly two minutes quicker. Of course, the performance of the 21-year-old – the youngest rider in the Giro – was quickly overshadowed by the nail-biting battle between Primož Roglič and Geraint Thomas. The American would eventually be 11th place but his remarkable ride left everyone wondering where this young American came from.
Cyclingnews spoke to him a few days after the race to find out.
A precocious start
Matthew Riccitello was on the USA team with junior world champion Quinn Simmons in 2019
The results show that Riccitello made a rapid rise from being a precocious teenager clipping off in a breakaway on one of the country’s fastest group rides to signing his first WorldTour contract with Israel-Premier Tech and making his Grand Tour debut.
The son of a professional triathlete, he dabbled in all three sports but cycling is the one that stuck.
“I don’t really remember what made me want to start road cycling – but once I started I liked it more than everything else and kept doing it,” Riccitello recalls.
Racing for the local club El Grupo, Riccitello started out in the 13-14 age group but quickly began competing with adults as a category 4, scoring top 10s in stage races like the Tucson Bicycle Classic, San Dimas Stage Race and Tour of the Gila.
The next year he claimed his first stage race victories in the Valley of the Sun and San Dimas Stage Race and his first national championship title in the time trial, all in the 15-16 age group in 2017.
Around the same time, he started jumping into The Shootout, a weekly group ride in Riccitello’s hometown of Tucson, Arizona. The Shootout is infamous for being one of the fastest and most competitive group rides in the country and one that is visited by many WorldTour pros who come to the city’s fair climate for winter training.
One day during The Shootout, he made the breakaway with Michael Woods, who was racing with the Cannondale team at the time, and it kicked off a remarkable string of events that vaulted him first onto the USA Cycling national team, Axel Merckx’s Hagens Berman Axeon squad and now the WorldTour.
“I guess he was impressed by me and mentioned my name to his coach [Paulo Saldanha – currently Israel-Premier…
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