Riccitello sat down with The Athletic to talk about breaking into the WorldTour as an American, the 2025 Vuelta and his Grand Tour dreams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up around the sport,\u201d Riccitello says, speaking from Paris in the middle of a training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Tour de France was always on TV in the summer and there were always bikes around the house, but I did all different sports growing up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d always run cross-country and track in middle school and the beginning of high school \u2014 the running races that I did when I was really young were almost harder than bike races now \u2014 and I swam for a little while on a year-round swim team.<\/p>\n
\u201cCycling was the last one I picked up, when I was 14 or 15, I don\u2019t know why, but once I started road cycling for the first time, that\u2019s all I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riccitello grew up and joined his first cycling team in Tucson, Arizona. There are no major WorldTour races in the United States \u2014 although the Maryland Cycling Classic, a second-tier race, has been expanded to three days for 2026 \u2014 while all three Grand Tours and the vast majority of the sport\u2019s major races take place in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely different,\u201d Riccitello says, describing growing up on the outside of such a Eurocentric sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Europeans get into the sport quite a bit earlier \u2014 before they can walk, they\u2019re riding a bike.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I came over to Europe for the first time, you were a bit behind. We\u2019re there to try to learn how to race our bikes with the Belgian kids, who are almost teaching us in a way because they\u2019ve been doing it for 10 years longer than we have already.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to learn in the United States \u2014 the way the roads are and the way the culture is, the races are just not as complex.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are races in the U.S., but they\u2019re not like anything compared to the European races.<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing tactically what to do is a huge part (of the differences), and then also positioning, when there are 100 people in the race instead of 40, and the roads are narrow, twisty and turning.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n Matthew Riccitello finishing alongside Britain\u2019s Tom Pidcock on stage 13 of the 2025 Vuelta (Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Ricitello first moved to Europe when he was 19, to join under-23s side Hagens Berman Axeon in Girona, Spain. The team was led by Axel Merckx, son of five-time Tour de France winner Eddy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest thing for non-European cyclists is just having to move everything to Europe and get used to the lifestyle here while also training and racing,\u201d Riccitello says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing so far away from where you grew up and your family is probably the hardest part of the sport. You\u2019re not a two-hour plane ride away from your family like most Europeans.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut on the other side, the one thing I do pretty much every day is ride my bike.\u201d<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t change from the U.S. to Europe. Consistency brings a bit of comfort.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s (also) a pretty cool opportunity to have, to spend so much time here and learn a bunch of different cultures because you\u2019re in a bunch of different countries. It\u2019s something that not a lot of non-Europeans get to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having left the junior classification for the under-23s in 2021, Riccitello made the step to the seniors and WorldTour racing two years later with Israel-Premier Tech.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s changed in the last four or five years and now the jump from the juniors to the under-23s is almost bigger than the jump from under-23s to professional,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A fifth-placed GC finish at the 2024 Tour de Suisse proved that Riccitello was taking the jump in his stride, setting up a 2025 season where he went from strength to strength.<\/p>\n
\u201cI approach every year pretty similarly,\u201d the 23-year-old continues. \u201cIf I feel like I\u2019m improving a bit year on year, then I\u2019m happy and motivated.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the beginning of the year, the plan from the team was to go to the Vuelta but I was told that they changed their plan and didn\u2019t want to race for GC and wanted stages.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe a month before the Vuelta, I was taken off the team. And then one or two weeks before, I was told again that I was back on the team because some guys got sick. The run into the race was a bit stressful.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was ready to be finished with the season and it was disappointing. I felt like I was going well and would miss this opportunity to perform well there. That made the result a lot cooler, because I made the most of the opportunity, which is really rare in the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n Riccitello in the front group on stage 17 of last year\u2019s Vuelta (Dario Belingheri\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
At 22 years old, Riccitello finished above established names such as Felix Gall, Sepp Kuss, Egan Bernal and Giulio Ciccone in the GC, and securing the white jersey.<\/p>\n
It had been a goal for him heading into the Vuelta \u2014 where he finished fourth in the youth classification the year before \u2014 but when was the first time in the race he thought it was seriously on the cards?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second stage,\u201d Riccitello says. \u201cIt was like the first uphill finish and I finished in the front group, but I just remember in my head thinking, \u2018If I\u2019m with these guys this early, three weeks is a long time\u2019. I knew that I had form.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first day you\u2019re with a select group and you then see that they\u2019re suffering as much as you are, you definitely get a confidence boost.\u201d<\/p>\n
It came down to the penultimate stage, with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe\u2019s Giulio Pellizzari in fifth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went into it thinking I didn\u2019t have anything to lose, so I was just excited to see what happened,\u201d Riccitello continues. \u201cThe whole day was UAE (Team Emirates) pushing a really hard pace so (the peloton) was in one line, which I like. I prefer the stage to be hard all day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the whole day is hard, I can be closer to what I can do fresh at the finish climb. There are a lot of guys similar to me who do well with a lot of fatigue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t always go perfectly, but the times when I notice that it doesn\u2019t go well are when you\u2019re fearing the suffering.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when you don\u2019t have that fear and you\u2019re more looking forward to it in a way, (it goes better). What helps me a lot is knowing that the more I\u2019m suffering, the more the rest of the guys are too. And then it\u2019s more of the battle of who can suffer the most.\u201d<\/p>\n
Protests that had affected the whole race forced the peloton to be neutralised in Madrid.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely would have been more enjoyable if there weren\u2019t protests,\u201d Riccitello says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe race is stressful enough as is, with all the moving parts, but it wasn\u2019t something that only our team had to deal with \u2014 everybody in the race had this feeling.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was also hard because in the back of my head, I still thought it\u2019s an issue that\u2019s bigger than sport. It was a weird feeling. The hardest thing for our team was just having that feeling like all these protests were happening because we were there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen the question was, \u2018If we left, what would things have been better?\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe definitely thought about (leaving). Our team wanted to finish the race. We thought leaving the race would also set a precedent, so I don\u2019t think that was the best option either.<\/p>\n
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\n The 2025 Vuelta was affected by protests (Pierre-Philippe Marcou \/ AFP)<\/p>\n
\u201cHistorically, sports have always been a place where you should be able to compete without any political issues, just focus on competition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before stage 14, Israel-Premier Tech changed their branding to remove \u2018Israel\u2019 from riders\u2019 jerseys due to safety concerns, in an effort to reduce the effects of the protests.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely didn\u2019t hurt,\u201d Riccitello notes. \u201cBut actually the whole rebrand for next year<\/a>\u00a0is good because the riders shouldn\u2019t have to wear Israel on the jersey.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is political now because of the war. You can have whatever view you want, but you shouldn\u2019t have to have Israel on the jersey.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, going forward, it\u2019s good. But maybe it would have been helpful to have things changed a bit earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n