Michael Matthews rolled into the press room on his race bike, parked it up against the winners’ stage and sat down to take questions from the press after his UCI Road World Championships bronze medal ride.
With the weight of a nation on his shoulders, and a team backing him in 100 percent, the expectations were high for Matthews in Wollongong. 12 years after winning the U23 rainbow jersey on home soil in Geelong, Matthews’ claimed a historic bronze medal on the Worlds’ return down under.
“I think this one is the best,” said Matthews, his legs too tired to walk.
On Friday, Matthews said of the race that “everyone brings in their cards and they can spin the race upside down.” His description proved apt. The chaotic opening led to groups strewn across the road with TV commentators struggling to decipher the race situation with the aid of TV graphics. For the riders without race radio, the situation in the peloton was even more difficult to ascertain who was where and doing what.
While the situation at the front of the race in the final two laps was crystal clear, Remco Evenepoel rampaging to victory, behind multiple groups were forming and dissolving. As a result, what appeared to be set for a sprint for silver between a chase group of five swelled to a contest of 27 riders.
In the sprint to the line Christophe Laporte of France narrowly got the better of Matthews who explained it was only minutes after finishing that he was told the bronze medal was his.
“We were talking in the peloton, (asking) if we were racing for anything because we didn’t know where exactly anyone was,” he said of the chaotic finale.
“We just kept catching bunches. Even in the last 500m of the race. I was thinking we weren’t even sprinting for top-ten and then I saw the French team lining up for Laporte and I jumped on the back of that and did my thing in the sprint.”
“But even after that, I didn’t know exactly where I finished. I found out a couple of minutes later that I was third.”
Matthews added that he was driven to sprint for the line, regardless of the result, to repay the faith and dedication of his teammates, and ‘super special’ home crowds.
“I just knew that we did a good team performance today and I just wanted to finish it off for Australia on home soil to see where I would end up. Whether it was fifth, tenth, 15th… it didn’t really matter, I just wanted to finish off in the best way I could and it was for a podium in the end which was…
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