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Michael Matthews has maintained his proud world championship record, taking silver in the road race. (Joel Carrett\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n Michael Matthews has maintained his proud world championship record, taking silver in the road race. (Joel Carrett\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n
Michael Matthews has raced to another global championship medal, the indestructible Australian cycling star earning silver at the world championship road race in Montreal just a day after his 36th birthday.<\/p>\n
The veteran known throughout the sport as “Bling” has developed a penchant over the years for picking up shiny baubles in the biggest event of all, and in a country where he’s tasted plenty of one-day successes, he collected his 11th world medal in total in his glittering 18-year career.<\/p>\n
Matthews won the sprint duel for silver on Sunday in the climax to the week-long championships as, 13 seconds up the road, Brandon McNulty rode away and hung on to emerge the surprise winner after the six-and-a-quarter-hour slog, ending a 33-year title drought \u200cfor American men.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old was left in disbelief at his win once he’d managed to hold on after launching his solo attack with 32km to go, but Matthews, the Team Jayco AlUla stalwart, still had the sprint legs in the group behind to hold off a host of luminaries \u00a0and snatch silver from former champ Mathieu van der Poel.<\/p>\n
It meant Matthews, a four-time world champ in under-23 and team events, could add to his global road race laurels, having also taken silver in 2015 and bronze in 2017 and 2022.<\/p>\n
It’s another considerable achievement for the man whose superb career seemed at risk last year when he suffered a pulmonary embolism, and who’s bounced back again after a training crash that sidelined him early in the season with two broken wrists.<\/p>\n
It’s why it felt such an emotional day for the Canberra luminary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s not only the way I raced the race today, it’s after what I’ve been through the last two years with the embolism in my lungs thinking my career was done, to breaking both my arms at the start of this year and thinking my career was done,” Matthews said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Now bouncing back to being second in the world’s road race, I\u2019m just speechless honestly.<\/p>\n
“I said to my wife at the start today, \u2018let’s just leave it all out there and be proud of the ride and at the end of the day make sure I finish with nothing left’, and that’s exactly what happened today.”<\/p>\n
Indeed, he was so drained he managed to get knocked off his bike by his wife in the celebrations, and lay sobbing on the floor beneath his racing shades at the finish.<\/p>\n
The absence of two-time \u200cdefending champion Tadej Pogacar, Matthews’ great friend, who is recovering from a crash he suffered last month, had left the field wide open, but McNulty’s triumph, the first by an American since Lance Armstrong in \u200b1993, was still a stunner – not least to the man himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m really at a loss for words. Until the \u200clast 300 metres, \u200cI didn’t believe \u2060it, I was so tired,” said McNulty, saluting his US teammates.<\/p>\n
“We’ve said for weeks that we have a super strong team and that it’s possible. We rode crazy well. We marked everything, had guys ahead.”<\/p>\n
Armstrong congratulated McNulty on \u200bhis victory. on social media, posting: “Hands down the \u200bmost exciting race of the \u2060year and a deserved winner. A thing of beauty”.<\/p>\n