"My hamstrings were screaming!” - Matilda Raynolds reveals she rode breakaway escapade at the Tour Down Under on wrong-sized bike

Matilda Raynolds was one of the stars of the opening stage at the Tour Down Under. Her immense breakaway efforts almost taking her all the way to victory before being caught with 9km to go.

The impressive effort was made even more impressive by the fact that Raynolds was riding on a wrong-sized bike. “About 3km in, I had a mechanical and had to swap bikes, so I was on a bike that was a little bit too small for me," she revealed in her post-race interview. "My hamstrings were screaming!”

“The seat came loose straight away, as soon as I hit a bump, so I literally had to jump on a new bike. The thought crosses your mind of like ‘how much bad luck can you have’ but I just had to take a deep breath and go again," she continues. "It went into crash mode at the very end there, so I was sprinting in a big gear, but the bike’s been amazing. It feels great that I could get on a bike that wasn’t even mine and still feel okay, but I’m already booking in the physio to try to fix my hammies.”

The stage was eventually won by Ally Wollaston in a bunch sprint. “I was going to make them work for it. When they don’t chase you down, it’s a bit of an insult, so I was going to make them work for it all day. I still had a minute and 20 there with almost 11km to go, so you dare to dream, you’ve got to really,” Raynolds concludes. “I felt really good out there, despite probably looking like a clown on my little bike.”