The wheel of fortune in the sport of pro cycling can be as cruel as it can be triumphant. After losing the Tour of Alberta team time trial by a crushingly close margin of 0.74 of a second to Trek Factory Racing on stage 1, Orica-GreenEdge turned their luck around when Michael Matthews won stage 2 into Grande Prairie, and moved into the lead of both the overall classification and the sprinter's competition.
"With the team that we brought here we expected to really dominate the team time trial yesterday but it didn't quite go as we had planned," Matthews said. "You have your good days and your bad days. We tried today to redeem ourselves from yesterday and the boys did better than I had expected them to ride in the final five kilometres. They really nailed it."
Matthews relied on his lead-out train to take him through the final five kilometres, and with the likes of team time trial specialists Svein Tuft, Luke Durbridge, Jens Mouris, Michael Hepburn and Sam Bewley escorting him to the finish line, taking the win was almost undeniable.
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"We just tried to use all our horsepower for the lead-out," Matthews said. "I was so happy to be able to pull off the win after such a great lead-out that the boys did for me. They risked a lot out there because it was a dangerous final with the weather and a lot of other teams trying to take the final of the race, so they risked a lot and it was nice to take the victory for them."
Matthews will wear the leader's jersey into the third stage but he is not expecting to hang onto it because it is the first of two summit finishes held in the Canadian Rockies during the Tour of Alberta.
The 181km race will start in Grande Cache and finish on the climb through Jasper National Park to Miette Hot Springs. The following day's stage 4 will again take the riders through Jasper National Park and finish on a 12km ascent to the Marmot Basin Ski Area.
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