Michael Matthews was disappointed not to secure a third consecutive victory at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec but the bizarre chase for UCI WorldTour ranking points offered some kind of perverse satisfaction and consolation for the Australian and his BikeExchange-Jayco team.
Matthews won the sprint up the rising Grand Allée finishing straight just as he did in 2018 and 2019 but ahead of him Benoît Cosnefroy (AG2R Citroën) was already celebrating the biggest win of his career after producing a superb solo attack to hold off the chasers.
Matthews was disappointed in defeat but scored 400 precious UCI points. While the UCI is considering rule changes that will mean chasing points will no longer be a decisive factor in deciding the WorldTour teams for 2023, for the moment every team in the relegation battle is still racing to score as many points as possible.
“It is changing racing and not in a good way,” Matthews said, admitting the realities of the fight to avoid WorldTour relegation.
“It is what it is. At the moment we have to accept it. Coming second earns a lot of points, so for us that’s a bit of a win.”
Matthews points haul helped BikeExchange-Jayco jump past EF Education-EasyPost and up to 16th in the three-year UCI team ranking that is used as the sporting criteria and WorldTour places. They are now 800 points above the relegation spots currently held by Lotto Soudal and Israel-Premier Tech.
Matthews is well aware of the points race and how BikeExchange-Jayco and their rivals have to put point scoring ahead of simply chasing victories.
“Our goal is to get as many points as we can in these two Classics,” he said, knowing that the winner scores 500 points and that other points go down to 60th place in one-day WorldTour races.
“Our goals was to get two or three guys in the top 15. But I think it was the fastest ever Quebec race, so we needed to use our strongest riders to help me. We sacrificed a lot of the team to get me as far forward in the finale.
Fortunately Matthews can still see the significance of his results.
“I did my best. I’ve won twice, finished second twice and third once. My performance is a good sign for Sunday for the race in Montreal and then in two weeks for the world championships,” he said, looking back over his race.
“I’m happy with my ride and my sprint but unfortunately it was for second.
“It's a really difficult race. Me and everyone sort of focused on Wout Van Aert and for the sprint. I had to play my cards that it would be a sprint and another team would panic and chase Cosnefroy but he had too much of a gap in the finale.”
