{"id":475133,"date":"2026-02-14T20:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T20:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/475133\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T20:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T20:29:08","slug":"riccitello-scores-on-day-two-for-new-team-but-first-had-to-frustrate-ineos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/475133\/","title":{"rendered":"Riccitello scores on day two for new team, but first had to frustrate INEOS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Riccitello<\/a> has made a dream start to life at Decathlon CMA CGM<\/a>. The 23-year-old American switched this winter from Israel-Premier Tech (now NSN Cycling) to the French outfit and immediately delivered a victory on stage 2<\/a> of the Tour de la Provence<\/a>. He did it by racing smart \u2014 and perhaps not because he was the outright strongest.<\/p>\n

The lightweight climber had to tackle the Montagne de Lure in harsh conditions: a stiff headwind, temperatures below freezing between snow walls, and a brutal final climb of almost 14 kilometres. At around 55 kilograms, it may well have felt even tougher for him than for most.<\/p>\n

Still, Decathlon CMA CGM managed to place Riccitello perfectly heading into the finale. After organisers cleared ice and snow from the road, the remaining snow banks produced a spectacular winter backdrop for the decisive climb.<\/p>\n

Decathlon had been working hard on the front as the peloton approached the foot of the ascent, but once the road tilted up, INEOS Grenadiers<\/a> hit the gas. Riccitello and Aur\u00e9lien Paret-Peintre held off the INEOS train, before Carlos Rodr\u00edguez launched a fierce acceleration.<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the video<\/p>\n

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The embedded tweet could not be found\u2026<\/p>\n

Riccitello had to ride tactically for Decathlon CMA CGMFor a moment Rodr\u00edguez looked like he might ride away, but Riccitello clung on just a few metres behind and, by doing so, took the sting out of the move. With the wind in their faces, even Rodr\u00edguez \u2014 who appeared to have the best legs \u2014 couldn\u2019t force a gap, and it came down to a short sprint<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Riccitello won that sprint. \u201cIt couldn\u2019t have gone better,\u201d said the stage winner and new overall leader afterwards. \u201cThe team kept me in position all day and I\u2019m really happy I could finish it off. This is a great start with the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the radio I heard we had two cards to play on the final climb, with Aur\u00e9lien and me,\u201d Riccitello explained. \u201cWith the headwind I knew Aur\u00e9lien had the best punch and he was close, so I stayed on Carlos\u2019 wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Brandon Rivera (INEOS) came back to Paret-Peintre, it got tense for a moment. \u201cBecause he\u2019s fast too,\u201d Riccitello said, \u201cbut in the end we played it perfectly. I decided to go early and I think that was the right decision \u2014 also because Aur\u00e9lien couldn\u2019t come back anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew Riccitello has made a dream start to life at Decathlon CMA CGM. The 23-year-old American switched this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,153716,635,175351,59639,76092,82,191895],"class_list":{"0":"post-475133","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-carlos-rodriguez","11":"tag-cycling","12":"tag-decathlon-cma-cgm","13":"tag-ineos-grenadiers","14":"tag-matthew-riccitello","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-tour-de-la-provence"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475133","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=475133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}