{"id":822013,"date":"2026-07-24T01:13:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T01:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/822013\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T01:13:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T01:13:19","slug":"cyclist-who-switched-countries-targeted-after-comparing-australia-to-high-school-and-england-to-hogwarts-commonwealth-games-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/822013\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyclist who switched countries targeted after comparing Australia to \u2018high school\u2019 and England to \u2018Hogwarts\u2019 | Commonwealth Games 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Richardson may have become public enemy No 1 in Australian cycling when he decamped to ride for the country of his birth \u2013 but the Commonwealth\u2019s<\/a> fastest man on two wheels reckons it\u2019s all had \u201czero effect\u201d on him.<\/p>\n

And if the flyer now in Team England colours thinks there\u2019s any lingering animosity towards him, having won two titles in the green and gold at the last Commonwealth Games<\/a> in Birmingham, he promises to use it as fuel for more success.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old, who was born in the English town of Maidstone but moved to Perth at nine and went on to carve out a brilliant track career for Australia, caused a sensation by switching allegiance straight after winning two silvers and a bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n

He received a life ban from competing for Australia, but despite early bitter criticism in the country that honed his cycling talent, he has since carved out a strikingly impressive career for Team GB and England.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to block out all the negativity and all the noise,\u201d Richardson shrugs when recalling the initial furore surrounding his switch. \u201cI experienced the way they decided to handle it at the time, and moved on as quickly as I could. Ultimately, it has zero effect on me. If, for some reason, the British public didn\u2019t take it well, that wouldn\u2019t have been very good \u2013 but it wasn\u2019t the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richardson is still battling to be the top sprinter in the world, having won silver at last year\u2019s world championships, behind the great Harrie Lavreysen, and having achieved the unthinkable when he defeated the flying Dutchman in the sprint at February\u2019s European Championships.<\/p>\n

He has twice cracked the flying 200m world record, becoming the first cyclist to do it in under nine seconds, and has made it clear he believes his advances have been down to his recent cycling education in the UK. As he famously put it in an interview with the BBC \u2013 and a mite woundingly for his old paymasters: \u201cA way I can probably describe it is the Australian program is like high school, and the British program is like Hogwarts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fly with more bikes, and more equipment, anything we need to perform at our absolute best at a given race,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember doing World Cups for Australia, and I would only fly over with my race bike. I fly to races now with about four or five bikes. These things really make a difference, when a final comes down to a thousandth of a second.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richardson\u2019s main rival in Glasgow could be his former Australian teammate Leigh Hoffman, who has said his old friend\u2019s presence in the England team will spice things up at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Aussies want me to smash him, the Brits want him to smash me and that\u2019s the way it goes,\u201d Hoffman said at the Australian team announcement in Brisbane. \u201cSeeing him in GB colours probably does bring out a bit more fire in me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leigh Hoffman after Australia\u2019s team sprint bronze at the Paris Olympics in 2024. Photograph: S\u00e9bastien Bozon\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

That is all grist to Richardson\u2019s mill. \u201cI use it as fuel,\u201d he said. \u201cI always find motivation in something, whether it\u2019s trying to hunt someone down, trying to be better than someone or trying to stay better than other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

One advantage Hoffman could have is that Richardson will be in Japan racing, and must hotfoot it to Glasgow so close to race day that he is not even sure which of the four sprint disciplines he will compete in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf\u00a0I was to race in the team sprint, I\u2019d fly in on the day and literally go straight to the velodrome and race,\u201d he said, insisting it still might be possible to\u00a0do the team sprint, sprint, keirin and kilo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Richardson may have become public enemy No 1 in Australian cycling when he decamped to ride for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-822013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822013","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=822013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}