He wants to beat Pogacar and van der Poel at Milano-Sanremo: "I still dream about that every night when I go to bed"

Michael Matthews is one of the riders with the most longitude in the peloton at this point, having over a decade of racing at the highest level. With this came a green jersey at the Tour de France; stage wins in all Grand Tours... But there is still one race he dreams about winning everyday and he is not afraid to take on Tadej Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel.

"As an under-23 rider, I was used to throwing myself into the race and I really enjoyed that. When I got into the WorldTour, I had to adapt to the way of racing," Matthews said in an interview with Sigma Sports. "And I never really liked that, waiting and then sprinting at the end". But Matthews, a sprinter/puncheur mix, is eager to take on a different attitude when it comes to racing, similar to that of riders such as Mads Pedersen and Wout van Aert who can rely on their sprint but are very aggressive.

"I actually like aggressive racing, but after all those years I had kind of gotten used to that one way of racing. Now the racing is different again and hopefully I can adapt to that and race aggressively again," he says. "That's the way I would like to do it, but at the crucial moments I automatically became a bit more conservative. That's how I won a lot of my races, so logically you gamble on that".

As a strong sprinter, Matthews can take that risk, but in recent years the peloton's sprinters have become more and more complete riders such as him. This decade, Matthews only took 6 wins, out of his total of 42. Perhaps to improve this number more quickly, the Team Jayco AlUla rider has to change his way of racing.

"... I want to go back to my roots: riding aggressively and going earlier. I have more options than waiting and then sprinting, which is also boring. Hopefully I can do it differently again this year," he anticipates. Matthews will race Paris-Nice; Milano-Sanremo; three Belgian cobbled classics; Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège later this spring.

But Sanremo, a city only a dozen few kilometers away from his home in Monaco, is the one he aims for the most. "I'm still chasing the races in which I've already come second and third. Milan-Sanremo, of course. I still dream about that every night when I go to bed". The 34-year old has finished on the podium three times, and on the Top10 another three times. Last year, he was incredibly close to winning, but was beaten by a Jasper Philipsen at the finish line.

But then, he also finished on the podium of the Tour of Flanders (until he was relegated). "And the Tour of Flanders has also become a kind of new passion. In the first half of my career I didn't think about it, but in part two I fell in love with that race. It's a super cool race and after last year I feel the fire to return," he concluded.