Visma-Lease A Bike's rising sprint star Matthew Brennan has shied away from comparisons with Mark Cavendish and his teammate Wout van Aert. The British neo-pro said he's focusing on himself and building his career rather than seeking to emulate either racer.
Brennan has been a revelation this spring, his first months in the peloton with the WorldTour team. He has already racked up four pro victories, including the GP de Denain and stages of the Volta a Catalunya and Tour de Romandie, as well as making his Paris-Roubaix debut.
The 19-year-old has drawn comparisons with the now-retired sprint star Cavendish, as well as his new teammate Van Aert, but he played them down in a recent interview with Het Nieuwsblad.
"If people want to compare me to them, that's fine. I take it as a compliment," Brennan said. "But I shouldn't do that, I should focus on myself. If I want to achieve something, I have to follow my own plan and build my own career.
"I'm not Wout van Aert, I'm not Mark Cavendish. They also each followed their own path. And it is very clear that I am nowhere near those two. I think I am also just different. Cavendish didn't win a stage with 3,000 climbing metres, for example. And Van Aert has a much bigger engine than I do."
Brennan called the win at the GP de Denain, where he outpaced Gianni Vermeersch and Dries De Bondt in a reduced sprint, his best day on the bike so far, saying that the result led to him "getting more chances faster than expected" – including the call-up to Paris-Roubaix.
"After Denain, I got a message from Mathieu Heijboer. He's Head of Performance of the team, but not my coach, and so normally not the person I often have contact with," Brennan said.
"'Call me back tonight,' he sent... All day I was asking myself what he wanted from me. Or had I done something wrong? Fortunately, not."
Brennan accompanied Van Aert at Roubaix, racing ahead of his leader at one point at the head of the race before fading to finish 44th on what was his longest day ever on the bike.
"When I passed Wout, I was just thinking how I could best serve the team," Brennan said. "I felt good, so it was my job to take on a bit more responsibility. I have already learned a lot from Wout, who is really a textbook example of how to do things as a professional cyclist.
"On the morning of Paris-Roubaix, I went knocking on his room door. I asked him: 'Wout, what should I expect from the next few hours?' He went over the tactics again, gave me a lot of valuable tips and believed I could still be there in the final. That put me at ease anyway."
Brennan said that he doesn't yet have the power necessary to challenge at a race like Paris-Roubaix but noted that his positioning, honed by racing track throughout his career so far, is already up there.
"I know now: with the necessary dose of luck, you can get very far in that race, because in terms of power, I am definitely not yet close to the better riders in the peloton. But positioning is at least as important in today's peloton. And I'm already pretty good at that," he said.
Brennan will be focused on road racing with Visma-Lease A Bike in the coming years, though he said that he "still has long-term goals on the track". For now, though, he has other major goals in his sights.
"The Tour of Flanders. And a stage in the Tour de France, specifically the one in 2027, with the Grand Départ in the UK," he answered when asked about his dream races. "I haven't told the team that they must definitely include me in the selection, but I have indicated that it is one of my big goals.
"I want to work towards that, without putting pressure on myself. If I don't make it, I'll be OK with that, too."
