{"id":96126,"date":"2025-08-25T15:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T15:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/96126\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T15:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T15:12:09","slug":"silver-oconnor-is-left-at-home-matthews-does-join-the-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/96126\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Silver’ O’Connor is left at home, Matthews does join the party"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Australian Cycling Federation has announced the selection for the upcoming World Championships in Rwanda. The team features several changes: the women\u2019s squad will be without outgoing world champion Grace Brown, and the men\u2019s squad surprisingly won\u2019t include Ben O\u2019Connor, last year\u2019s silver medalist. O’Connor has opted for a different race program. Michael Matthews<\/a>, however, makes the cut, despite not having raced since suffering a pulmonary embolism in June.The Australian team is forced to shift gears. \u201cBen told us early in the season that fitting the Worlds into his schedule would be difficult,\u201d said head coach Conor Taylor in a press release<\/a>. \u201cHis goal was to ride both the Tour and the Vuelta, which requires a specific build-up and recovery.\u201d As a result, Jai Hindley will lead the charge. \u201cHe\u2019s hungry to represent Australia after his major setback earlier this year with his crash in the Giro.\u201dWith Hindley as team leader, Australia hopes to make a strong showing. \u201cHe was already a key rider for us last year. When he saw this year\u2019s course, he was incredibly motivated to race in Rwanda. We believe we\u2019ve built a solid team around him.\u201d The other Australians at the start are Michael Storer<\/a> (Tudor), Chris Hamilton (Picnic PostNL), Callum Scotson (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates – XRG), Chris Harper, Luke Plapp<\/a> and Michael Matthews (Jayco-AlUla).<\/p>\n

Continue reading below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"michael<\/p>\n

Michael Matthews will start at the World Championships in Rwanda.<\/p>\n

Matthews in, Gigante (injured) outMichael Matthews is a notable inclusion in Australia\u2019s squad for the World Championships in Rwanda. The 34-year-old all-rounder suffered a pulmonary embolism<\/a> in June, which forced him to skip both the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a. He hasn\u2019t raced since May, but the team expects him to be ready for Rwanda. Matthews is also set to compete in the Mixed Relay, alongside Luke Plapp and Jay Vine, while Plapp and Vine will take on the individual time trial.<\/p>\n

On the women\u2019s side, Brodie Chapman (UAE Team ADQ), Lauretta Hanson, and Amanda Spratt (Lidl-Trek) will spearhead the campaign to defend the team\u2019s world title from Zurich. Chapman is also scheduled to race the individual time trial. They\u2019ll be joined in the road race by Neve Bradbury (CANYON\/\/SRAM), Alexandra Manly (AG Insurance \u2013 Soudal), and Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Liv AlUla Jayco), who finished sixth last year.<\/p>\n

Originally, Sarah Gigante was expected to be one of the team\u2019s leaders, but a broken femur sustained during training has ruled her out of the event. She\u2019ll now have to support the team from the sidelines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Australian Cycling Federation has announced the selection for the upcoming World Championships in Rwanda. The team features…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-96126","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\/96126","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=96126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}