After going a whole season without a victory Michael Matthews is going ‘back to basics' in a bid to rediscover a winning formula that he hopes will catapult him to success in the Classics and Grand Tours.
Much was expected of Matthews at the start of 2021 when he re-signed at BikeExchange, with the expectation that the Australian would seamlessly intertwine himself with a team he enjoyed major success with in the past. However, those best-laid plans failed to unfold and by his own admission, Matthews found himself struggling to find his footing in a season that promised much but delivered little.
“I’ve had a lot of time to look back at the year. It was a difficult one, that’s for sure, but I’ve tried not to think about it too much because there weren’t too many positives from the racing side,” Matthews tells Cyclingnews from his family home in Monaco.
A five-week break from training and complete rest through October and November gave Matthews the chance not just to recharge his batteries but also to look back at his campaign and properly evaluate the season.
While he admits that the year held few positives there are still some to be found. He was incredibly consistent, racking up a string of top-tens in a year that included two Grand Tours and a heavy Classics engagement. Although the wins dried up, the fact that Matthews kept knocking on the door, and that his team repeatedly backed him, speaks volumes of their confidence in a rider they brought back.
“After the few crashes that I had at the start of the year, I probably didn’t take enough time off the bike in order to recover. Then I was just chasing my tail all year,” he says.
“I was too excited to be back with the new team and I was doing all the racing and training that I could. I paid for it, and I just wasn’t good enough.
“I was just missing that one or two per cent to get that win. That would have really got the ball rolling. That would have brought extra motivation and morale for me, for the team, and the riders around me. Unfortunately, we just didn’t get that win to get the ball rolling. But pressure came in, and frustration and everything just builds up. It makes it more difficult, and I’ve never really been in that sort of situation before. There was a build-up of a lot of mental and physical things during the year and that just made it difficult.”
At the Tour Matthews came tantalizingly close to winning the first stage, taking second behind Julian Alaphilippe. The Frenchman also claimed the first yellow jersey of the race, while Matthews finished empty-handed. It was a microcosm of Matthews' season in one moment - strong but strong enough.
Five more top-tens followed with Mathieu van der Poel, Mark Cavendish and Wout van Aert carving up the sort of stages Matthews typically succeeded in over the years. Along with missing his edge, the fact also remains that the sport is simply far more competitive than it was in the past.
Five years ago, Matthews’ primary concerns were whether Peter Sagan was going to edge him out at World Championships or if the pure sprinters were about speed by him on pan-flat finishes, but these days there are multiple Sagans, and they’re all better than the last. Where Matthews had to content with perhaps one or two key rivals he now has to contend with at least half a dozen.
“The new generation is putting a whole new twist on cycling,” he says.
“Racing was more predictable before and now no one knows where riders are going to attack and you need a bit of luck and to be in the right place at the right time. It makes things more interesting for fans, and racing is certainly less predictable.”
At the same time, Matthews does acknowledge that the 2021 season he built together with BikeExchange had slightly shaky foundations. He enjoyed his year racing with the team, he says, but in a bid to impress, and in a move to pay back the team for their faith in him he simply tried to do too much. He overloaded his life and schedule with too many distractions, and in the end, he struggled to keep everything together.
“From my point of view, it was more just disappointment with myself because I couldn’t perform the way that I wanted to. I wanted to pay back the team for bringing me back at the start of the year. It was a privilege to come back but I think I was maybe trying too hard,” he says.
Not only that but BikeExchange was a different team from the one he left at the end of 2016. The ethos and culture may have remained but several management and roster changes had been made in the intervening years, and it must have felt like returning to an old house only to find that the furniture and interior design had been updated several times over. For those, Matthews included, who expected the rider to simply find his groove immediately, it wasn’t that simple.
“From the outside, a lot of the team is the same as before but obviously everyone has grown and so have I. Being at Sunweb for four years, I experienced a lot of things, and in the end, I thought going back to the team would be exactly the same but it’s changed and grown too. Having this year to understand the team, and fit back in was probably harder than I expected but at the same time, I really enjoyed every bit of it. It was different from what I expected this year, but certainly not in a bad way. It’s just taking a bit of time.”
So now it’s back to basics for the former winner of the Tour’s green jersey. He’s stripped back his responsibilities and his off-bike commitments so that he can fully concentrate on the details that matter most – riding his bike.
“I changed a lot of the training that I’d been doing pre-season. Aside from that I’ve changed a lot of things that I’d been doing outside of racing, and I’ve really tried to minimise the extra things that I had been doing,” he says.
“This year I had too many things in my life and I just don’t think that my body had enough time to properly rest. I’ve tried to simplify everything down to train, eat, sleep. I’m not going to try and do absolutely everything, from counting calories to getting a massage every day. I just wasn’t fresh this year. This year I’d be trying to do a gym session every day, I’d be planning every single meal, and I know it sounds less professional but what I was doing before 2021 wasn’t over-complicating my life. It was all-natural.”
“I’m really looking to just move on towards next year. I’m already feeling good on the bike, and I’m feeling better than I did for most of this year. I think that I just needed that really big break to mentally and physically switch off. Already what I’ve started to do with my family and my coach in Monaco, and simplifying my life, is creating the right mindset. I want to continue like that, and if I’m doing that and smiling then I know that I’ll get the best out of myself.”
Matthews’ race programme has yet to be finalised but it’s likely that he will open his season at either Tirreno-Adriatico or Paris-Nice next season. From there he will undoubtedly target Milan-San Remo and several of the other Spring Classics, including the Amstel Gold Race. The Tour de France is sure to be on his race calendar too but he also has an eye on the Worlds in Australia, should they take place. Matthews won a rainbow jersey in the U23 road race the last time the Worlds were held in Australia back in 2010.
The dream scenario would be to take a second world title on home roads but for now, the priority is for Matthews to simply return to winning ways. It doesn’t matter if it’s a WorldTour win or something less prestigious. A win could be all he needs to get back on track.
“It’s been a long time without a win and it needs to come early, that’s for sure. I want to get the ball rolling and help the team get back to where they should be,” he says.
