Few people had Brandon McNulty picked to win the world championship in Montr\u00e9al. Fewer still had Michael Matthews anywhere near the podium.<\/p>\n
Yet on Sunday the veteran Australian rider, who turned 36 the day before, finished on the second podium spot, standing above a former world champion, Mathieu van der Poel.<\/p>\n
Matthews crossed the finish line in disbelief, his head going into his hands. The victory caps off a return to form after a scary last year and a half full of personal struggle.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt all came together today after what I\u2019ve been through the last two years,\u201d he said after the race. \u201cIt\u2019s been a roller coaster, so I thought my career was done two times in the last two years and now to be here with a silver medal around my neck at the world championships is a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feeling difficulty breathing and an erratic heartrate, he was hospitalized before the Tour de France in 2025 with a pulmonary embolism, a serious condition where blood clots travel to the lungs blocking oxygen to the rest of the body. He would ultimately be out of competition for three months, but at the time he feared it could be the end of his career, or even his life.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to March of this year and he would again be sidelined after breaking both wrists in a training crash. That incident would keep him out a further three months, and again have him questioning whether he could continue his racing career. But he returned to racing once more.<\/p>\n
While Matthews has historically performed well at the Canadian Grands Prix, winning three times in Quebec as well as in Montreal in 2018, he finished 54th in this year\u2019s edition just two weeks prior.<\/p>\n
Since that lackluster result, Matthews has spent the last two weeks training for worlds. And on Sunday he played his cards right.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had my tactics today, which was stay quiet, stay around the real favorites and make sure to try and bring some metal home,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think somehow that worked out today.\u201d<\/p>\n Matthews made the final chase group after an extremely difficult, attritional race, and though any chances of catching Brandon McNulty\u2019s solo attack up the road were neutralized by Matteo Jorgenson and Quinn Simmons in the break, he was able to best everyone else in the grinding, slightly uphill 500-meter run in to the finish line.<\/p>\n \u201cI was speaking to my wife before the race today, and she just said, honestly, go out there, enjoy, and just leave it all out there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cMake sure you finish the race, knowing that you gave it everything you had.\u2029 And I think that\u2019s why I was able to achieve today\u2026 I\u2019m pretty speechless still to be sitting here right now with a silver medal around my neck.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/matthews-earns-surprise-silver-at-worlds\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-2296906208.jpg”] Updated September 28, 2026 01:18AM Few people had Brandon McNulty picked to win the world championship in Montr\u00e9al. Fewer still had Michael Matthews anywhere near the podium. Yet on Sunday the veteran Australian rider, who turned 36 the day before, finished on the second podium spot, standing above a former world champion, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-2167653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2167653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2167653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2167653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2167653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-2297438446.jpg?width=2048&auto=webp&quality=75&fit=cover\")