Nationality: Australian
Date of birth: September 26, 1990
Height: 180cm
Weight: 72kg
Team: Team Sunweb
Twitter: @blingmatthews

Michael Matthew’s 2017 season

With strong team behind him at the 2017 Tour de France, Michael Matthews was hoping to build on Team Sunweb’s success at the Giro d’Italia with Tom Dumoulin’s victory.

Early dominance by Marcel Kittel saw the German take five stages in the first half of the race as he all but secured the green jersey. However, Matthews, determined to fight to the end continued to take intermediate sprint points as his German rival would focus solely on stage wins but as the race started to grow Kittel started to struggle.

Punchy stages coupled with high mountain top finishes saw Kittle drop backwards and Matthews started to prosper. Stage 14 saw Matthews take his second ever Tour de France stage on a punchy finish. Then a few mountain stages were the final blow as Kittel succumbed to illness, while Matthews started to prosper once more with another win on stage 16.

A crash on stage 17 saw Kittel leave and Matthews all but secure the Tour de France green jersey, being the first Australian to do so since Robbie McEwan. Sure enough, he maintained his lead, rolling into Paris the leader of the points competition for 2017.

Michael Matthew’s career to date

A solid sprinter and puncheur, Michael Matthews is one of the most successful Australian riders in the pro peloton today. Having won stages in all three Grand Tours, Matthews isn’t afraid of trying new races and has won a Grand Tour stage every year since 2013. The sprinter will hope to continue that this year after being named in Team Sunweb‘s Tour de France starting line up.

Known as ‘bling’ in the peloton for his love of shiny earrings, Matthews has won several points jerseys throughout his career including back to back green jerseys in Paris-Nice (2015, 2016).