“I still believe I can win the green jersey,” Matthews said confidently. “With fewer pure sprint stages in recent years, I still believe I have it in me.”<\/p>\n
However, the Australian was remarkably candid about the reality of chasing such a prestigious prize. Winning the points classification requires more than just individual speed. It demands a squad dedicated to controlling intermediate sprints and lead-outs for three weeks, which is a luxury Matthews does not expect to have in 2026.<\/p>\n
“To win the green jersey, just like the yellow jersey, you need a full team committed to that goal,” he admitted. “I probably won\u2019t get that this year.”<\/p>\n
Beyond the Grand Tours, Matthews has his sights set on the first monument of the year: Milan-Sanremo. It is a race where he has extremely close history, including a second-place finish in 2024. It will be a nearly impossible task this year however, as he acknowledges that the landscape of the race has changed with the aggressive racing of Tadej Pogacar<\/a> and Mathieu van der Poel<\/a>. Still, he refuses to be intimidated.<\/p>\n “I\u2019ve been very close before, but with Pogacar and Van der Poel in the race, it will obviously be difficult, but I still have belief,” Matthews said. “It pushes me to get the best out of myself every season. So that this year I can compete with those kinds of guys,” he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“I still believe I can win the green jersey,” Matthews said confidently. “With fewer pure sprint stages in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,13633,145857,82,1422],"class_list":{"0":"post-460786","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-mathieu-van-der-poel","12":"tag-michael-matthews","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tadej-pogacar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460786","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=460786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}