“Now I can officially say I’m teammates with Vingegaard and Van Aert” – Visma’s next generation arrives on the WorldTour stage at Tour Down Under

For years, he was part of the background machinery that fed Visma’s future. Now he is riding in the same colours as Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert, lining up in WorldTour races instead of watching them on television.

“Now I can officially say I’m teammates with Vingegaard, Van Aert, Laporte and many other big riders,” Pietro Mattio said in conversation with Bici.Pro. “The nice thing is that they are normal, calm people you can joke and talk with. At the beginning, I thought: I’m only twenty and they are all older with crazy careers behind them.”

That line captures exactly what Mattio’s 2026 season represents. A rider who grew up inside Visma’s development system has now crossed the final line into the elite level, starting his first WorldTour season at the Tour Down Under, where the opening prologue has already confirmed just how sharp the level is. For Mattio, simply being there is already a milestone.

He arrived in Australia around ten days before the race with the rest of the Visma group. “Here in Australia it’s nice,” he explained. “In the last days there was some rain and the temperatures dropped a bit. Compared to those who arrived at the start of January, we avoided the big heat. The maximum temperatures are around 30 to 35 degrees, so we can say it’s a real Australian summer.”

But climate is not what defines this step. It is the calendar.

Unlike previous seasons in the development team, this year his programme has been built entirely around what Visma think he can become. “This year the calendar was decided by the team based on the idea they have of me and of the rider they think I am and can become,” he said. “The Tour Down Under will be a first test to compare myself with the level of the WorldTour.”

That test has already started with the prologue in Adelaide, where Visma went all in early and then paid for it later. For Mattio, the result matters less than the experience. His season is not about chasing general classification. It is about learning to exist inside racing at the very top.

He knows exactly what comes next. “At the moment I know that after Australia I’ll go home and then leave straight away for the UAE Tour where I’ll work for Vingegaard,” he said. “After that I return to Italy and prepare for the Classics. I’ll do Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne and the opening in Flanders. The team has put me as a reserve for Milano-Sanremo and I’m on the list for Roubaix.”

For a rider coming from the development team, that is not a small vote of confidence.

The shift has not just been sporting. It has been structural. “When you move to the WorldTour something is different, it’s normal,” Mattio said. “In the past with the devo team we were about fifteen riders and ten staff. This year in December at camp there were thirty riders and around seventy staff.”

Yet in the middle of that scale, some things stayed familiar. “Luckily some certainties remained, like the nutritionist and my reference DS, who was also promoted from the devo team to the WorldTour,” he said. “Being grown inside the team has been an advantage. I already knew the staff, so it was easier.”

What matters most is how the team see him as a rider. “At the moment I’ll work in support of the various leaders, but without a precise role,” he explained. “They’ve defined me as an all-rounder, so I can go well in different races and on many types of parcours: flat, short climbs, and I’ll also try the role of lead out in sprints.”

That versatility is exactly why he has been placed alongside two very different leaders. “Here in Australia I’ll be next to Matthew Brennan, while at the UAE Tour the leader will be Vingegaard,” he said. “First a sprinter, then a climber. It means the team believes in my qualities.”

Even with that faith, Mattio is realistic about what this season is meant to be. It is not about proving he belongs. It is about learning how to belong.

Still, dreams matter. “Participating in one of the two Monuments I’ve been put on the list for would be a dream,” he said. “Roubaix is an objective. I want to test myself and see how different it is from the under-23 race. How much faster it is and how you move in the race.”

That line fits neatly into Visma’s wider picture. The team are not just building around Vingegaard and Van Aert for today. They are quietly stacking riders who might define their next decade.

Mattio is not being sold as a future star. He is being placed inside winning environments to see what grows.

At the Tour Down Under, he is already living that reality. The prologue has shown how unforgiving the WorldTour is, even over 3.6 kilometres. Over the next days, he will see how stage racing at this level really works.

And somewhere between riding next to Brennan in Australia and riding for Vingegaard in the desert, the idea he voiced so simply will start to feel real.

He is no longer watching the stars.

He is racing with them.