Michael Matthews looking devastated at the finish of a bike race is certainly not a novelty, but his body language after stage 17 of the Tour de France Voiron on Wednesday indicated that this will rank up there as one of the bigger regrets of the Australian's career.
Matthews, who wears his emotions on his sleeve, hunched over his bike and buried his face in his handlebars just beyond the finish line of stage 17. He remained there for several minutes.
At separate moments, his wife and his daughter offered some comfort, but paradoxically it was their presence that made this all so painful.
"It's obviously amazing to have them here, but you want to win for them at the same time," Matthews said.
"Crossing the finish line where I finished… I knew they were waiting at the finish line, so it sucks."
Matthews crossed the line in ninth place out of a breakaway group of 25 riders who contested the finish in Voiron. These reduced group sprints are usually where Matthews shines, but there was a purer sprinter in the ranks, Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Premier Tech), and Matthews himself never found a route through the chaos in the twisting final kilometres.
"I just got completely swamped in the sprint," he explained.
"I tried to get back to the front in the corners but I just completely messed up the sprint."
There was something of a consolation in the form of Matthews' teammate Mauro Schmid taking second place on the day, but it wasn't enough of a consolation.
"A podium place in the Tour de France is always good, but yeah, for me I expected more out of myself. These messy bunch sprints are always quite tricky with the timing and everything. I'm just disappointed in myself."
As for how long this disappointment will linger, Matthews was pretty clear.
"We have a 12-hour rule in our team. We debrief the race, we say what we want to say in the debrief, we have 12 hours to get over it, and then we move on."
Three summit finishes await, but Matthews will have one final chance in this Tour de France on the final day in Paris, which features the cobbled climb over Montmartre plus an extended flat section towards the finish line on the Champs-Élysées.
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