It’s every rider’s dream: winning the UCI Road World Championships and wearing the rainbow jersey. For Michael Matthews, the elite men’s road race in Wollongong, Australia will be the chance to live that dream for a second time, 12 years after claiming the under-23 title in Geelong.
In 2010, the elite races were dominated by now-retired riders like Thor Hushovd, Matti Breschel, and the Australian bronze medalist Allan Davis. In the under-23s, Matthews prevailed over John Degenkolb and Guillaume Boivin.
Now, Matthews heads into a home elite world championships as the obvious leader for Australia and has big dreams of racing next season in the rainbow jersey. He barely got to wear the jersey after his U23 victory as he turned professional the next season with Rabobank.
“Yeah, we’ll definitely be doing everything we can to get the stripes but it’s going to be a war and I’m excited to take up the challenge obviously,” Matthews told Cyclingnews before racing the Maryland Cycling Classic.
“It’s something I dream about every single night, fighting for that jersey. I think having the team around that we have this year and being in Australia, it’s going to be very special.”
In the dozen years since his last world title, Matthews has had his share of ups and downs. He’s won four stages of the Tour de France, two stages of the Giro d’Italia, and three in the Vuelta a España. He’s also had a long spell of struggles during his four years with Team Sunweb, was shut out of the team’s Tour de France roster in 2020 and then agreed with the team to terminate his contract prematurely.
In that time, he’s also grown as a rider and this year, with pure sprinter Dylan Groenewegen joining BikeExchange-Jayco, Matthews has been able to race aggressively, and that was how he earned his first Tour de France stage win in five years from a breakaway.
“Honestly, I’ve been wanting to race like that for a very long time,” Matthews said. “When I was a kid, this is how I would race – I would be the kid attacking all day and just trying to make everyone else around me tired, and then go for the sprint. But I was never a rider that really liked to sit in the peloton all day and do a sprint in the final. That never made me happy.”
However, with a victory in the points classification in the 2017 Tour de France, Matthews was expected to be the protected sprinter for Sunweb. But he crashed out of the 2018 Tour and went winless in 2019 before being left off Sunweb’s Tour team in 2020.
Matthews said…
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