{"id":337986,"date":"2025-12-11T01:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T01:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/337986\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T01:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T01:23:08","slug":"michael-matthews-ready-to-take-2026-head-on-with-new-motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/337986\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Matthews ready to take 2026 head-on with new motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

With the little workload in summer, there was at least a room on Matthews’ schedule to travel for the Japan Cup, ticking off one item from the bucket list in the process: “It has always been a dream of mine to go to Japan,” Matthews says. “I love everything about it, so it was our dream to go there. My daughter was already googling and making a checklist of what she wanted to do, it was amazing to see how happy she was.”<\/p>\n

Motivated like never beforeOvercoming such serious health issue, many would rethink whether to continue to pursue their cycling career at the age of 35. But Matthews put a pen on the paper to sign a new contract at Jayco AlUla through 2027<\/a> instead.<\/p>\n

“Everyone said: was this the sign that it\u2019s the end of my career? But as long as my health is fine, it\u2019s like a second chance in cycling. When you\u2019ve had something potentially taken away from you, something that\u2019s your hobby, your dream, your life – I think I appreciate it even more, that I can do it everyday.”<\/p>\n

“You hear a lot of guys getting older and losing a little bit of motivation, but for me it\u2019s the opposite. I\u2019m even more motivated than I was any other year. I\u2019m still the guy attacking my teammates and being stupid all the time, because I still love riding my bike.”<\/p>\n

Chasing the Sanremo victory<\/p>\n

In 2024, Matthews finished second in a reduced group sprint at the Milano-Sanremo, his favourite Monument and the one where his odds to win seem to be highest. And although Tadej Pogacar continues to make the race increasingly challenging for men like Matthews, the ambition to one day add La Primavera to his palmares is not gone.<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/p>\n

Michael Matthews won the sprint for 4th at the 2025 Milano-Sanremo<\/p>\n

“I still haven\u2019t ticked the boxes that I dream of every morning – obviously Milan-Sanremo. I\u2019ve been close so many times. It\u2019s not just a box to tick, but It\u2019s a dream of mine to win. I\u2019m not going to give up until my body does.”<\/p>\n

“If I\u2019m going there riding for second or third – that\u2019s not motivating. I see them as amazing athletes, but this is why we do sport, because we believe we can win. In the past, it\u2019s always been these same guys, but they\u2019re also human, they can make mistakes,” he concludes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the little workload in summer, there was at least a room on Matthews’ schedule to travel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,145857,128988,82,130310],"class_list":{"0":"post-337986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-michael-matthews","12":"tag-milano-sanremo","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-team-jayco-alula"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}