Michael Matthews (Sunweb) made his final pre-Worlds starts last weekend in Canada at the GPs Québec and Montréal, and he proved his form for Bergen with top 10s in both, including a third-place finish in Quebec City.
Cycling Australia has tapped the 2015 silver medalist as their sole leader for the UCI Road World Championships for the second year running, with a team built to support him all the way to a hoped-for selective sprint finish. If that is indeed how the race plays out, Matthews has already had a dry run against a few of the chief contenders, including defending champion Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe), who successfully defended his Québec title last Friday.
"It was another good preparation here in Canada. It's a similar course to what the Worlds will be with a climb and a circuit. Though Norway is quite a bit longer, so I'm assuming I'll be better than in the shorter race," Matthews said after his second career podium performance in the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec. He agreed with an assessment by Québec runner-up Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) that he, Sagan and Van Avermaet were all likely to be going head to head at the business end of the Worlds road race.
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"Hopefully like Greg said this is the podium but in a different order. I think each one of us wants to be on the top step, but I think it will be a good show to see who will be on that top step."
Claiming a pair of stage wins and the points jersey at the Tour de France to go with wins in the Vuelta al País Vasco and the Tour de Suisse, Matthews has enjoyed one of his strongest years as a pro. He joined Sunweb at the start of the season after four years with various iterations of Orica, and has slotted in to a void left by John Degenkolb, who jumped to Trek-Segafredo for 2017.
Turning a sharp Classics skill set and strong career results into actual victories has been a challenge for Matthews thus far, however. He has delivered impressive performances in top-tier one-day races throughout the calendar, with seven top 10s in WorldTour one-day races this season, but has never taken a victory in a one-day event at the WorldTour level. Ahead of his biggest one-day race objective of the year, then, the Canadian GPs were a valuable piece of his tune-up puzzle.
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