Australian cyclist Michael Matthews won the under-23 men's road race in his home country on Friday becoming the first Aussie to win at this year's UCI Road World Championships.
Germany's John Degenkolb finished second and Taylor Phinney of the US finished in a dead heat for third place with Guillaume Boivin of Canada.
Phinney's bronze medal in the 99-mile road race around Geelong will complement his gold medal he earned earlier this week in the under-23 world championship time trial. After the race, Phinney said:
“I gave a big lunge to the line, really didn’t think that I had gotten third, it was pretty interesting moments after the finish just kind of sitting there like, ‘really? You don’t know if I came third or not?’ but to share it with Guillaume [Boivin] (CAN) is kind of cool, we’ve raced together for three years or so, we were battling it out in the sprints at Tour de l’Abitibi in 2007…I didn’t really think I was going to do that well today so I’m pretty happy.”
Solo flyer
Another US cyclist, Ben King, led for most of the 10-lap race and looked like he might pull off another solo victory similar to the one at the US Nationals road race championship at Greenville, South Carolina, recently. He attacked at the start and at one point had a 4-minute lead before he was caught about three-quarters into the race.
Under-23 road race results at UCI website.
The elite women's road race is Saturday and the elite men's road race is Sunday.
Previous winners are Phinney (US), under-23 men's time trial; Emma Pooley (Great Britain), elite women's time trial, and Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland), elite men's time trial.
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