Team Jayco AlUla is going all-in with Michael Matthews at this weekend’s Amstel Gold Race.
Matthews has been on a fantastic run of performances this spring, which includes a second-placed finish at Milan-San Remo. He has a good record at Amstel with five top-10 finishes over the years and a visit to the podium.
The Australian will be backed by a team that is a mixture of youth and experience. Both Lawson Craddock and Luke Durbridge are set to ride the Dutch classic for the fifth time, while Anders Foldager and Felix Engelhardt are making their debuts.
Completing the roster for Sunday’s Amstel Gold Race are Mauro Schmid and Jan Maas, who are riding the one-day race for the second and third times respectively.
The Amstel Gold Race sees the riders snake their way around the Limburg region of the Netherlands, setting off from Maastricht before finishing in Valkenburg. There will be few sections of flat over the 253km race with a never-ending sequence of climbs and descents almost all the way to the line.
Team Jayco AlUla line-up:
Michael Matthews
Lawson Craddock
Luke Durbridge
Anders Foldager
Mauro Schmid
Jan Maas
Felix Engelhardt
Lawson Craddock:
“Amstel is always an iconic race on the calendar and I’m definitely excited to line up there again this year. We’ve seen a big shift in how these races are raced in the last couple of years and they’ve definitely got much more aggressive with the final starting much further out. I think we can expect a lot of the same for Amstel Gold Race on Sunday. The course is challenging all day and it definitely forces everyone to be on the front foot all day if they want any chance of success and that will be objective number one for us.
We’re going in with Michael Matthews and he’s been on a tear lately with some of the big results that he’s got. There’s a lot of confidence in him knowing that he can deliver a good ride for us. I think we’ll just aim to be proactive all day and make it our ride instead of trying to race someone else’s race.”
Pieter Weening (Sport Director):
“Michael Matthews will be our leader. He’s in really good shape and he finished off his cobbled classics campaign in really good shape and with the team we’re going to fully focus on him. We also know that it is always a hard race and it’s always about positioning so getting into the right place before crucial points is the most important task for the other riders and getting Matthews into the right position. That’s the only goal the other riders have, positioning him and keeping him out of trouble.
The whole parcours is situated in 30 square kilometres so there are a lot of climbs that we will do two or three times. I think in total it’s like 33 climbs and it will be a hard and taxing day. For us, the focus is on Matthews, delivering him into position in crucial points.”
Photo: Kristof Ramon
