Some 600 metres after the Tour de France stage 13 finish line at Belfort in a quiet, tree-lined boulevard, a small pack of reporters waited for the Jayco-AlUla riders to reach their team bus and begin the celebratory round of interviews after a memorable victory by teammate Mauro Schmid.
The Swiss rider outduelled XRG-Astana's Harold Tejada after the team put four riders in the massive breakaway that took formed long before the main challenge of the day, the category 1 Ballon d'Alsace. And all of them played a part in Schmid's victory.
Schmid underscored that team effort, telling reporters that given the squeeze on opportunities for breakaway victories in this year's Tour, "when the opportunities to succeed are less, then you have to go all in on those days.
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"The whole team was on it today, everybody was keen to be in that breakaway and there in numbers. The guys had my back, and it was a huge team effort."
With four riders in the 57-rider breakaway, Jayco were one of the best-represented squads. Only Groupama-FDJ United and Q36.5-Pinarello had as many. But the team weren't simply holding on for dear life on another day run off at a blisteringly fast pace through the flatlands of eastern France and onto the Vosges. All four - Schmid, Luke Plapp, Ben O'Connor and Michael Matthews - were still there once the going got tough on the Ballon d'Alsace, where the group was reduced to less than a third of that original number.
O'Connor was able to keep the pace high at the front with Schmid on his wheel in the crucial middle third of the eight-kilometre climb. Then Plapp launched multiple attacks on the upper slopes and covered moves by key dangerman Tom Pidcock (Q36.5-Pinarello). That was before Schmid, also on the attack close to the summit, and Tejada got away with 11 kilometres to go on the sweeping descent. Meanwhile, Matthews - on paper the fastest in the front group - acted as a deterrent for counter-moves in a second chasing group a little further behind.
"It was brutal from the start," Michael Matthews, the first to make it to the bus as Schmid was wrapped up with post-stage ceremony duties until long after the finish, told reporters after wheeling to a halt.
"We were quite lucky, but Mauro got in a good move with 30+ guys, probably 20ks into the stage. We thought that was an ok move but there were too many guys to just have Mauro in the move."
"So once it opened up again, we had three more get across with Ben-O and Plappy and myself, just to be sure we had as many numbers as possible."
"Then what more can you ask for? We've been waiting for this."
As Matthews explained, stage 13 was the first in this year's Tour when, rather than one rider feeling good and the rest feeling average, the whole team felt strong enough to contribute. For him, to be finally heading back to the level he had before his bad training accident this spring and also contribute to the victory meant that Schmid's triumph could not have come at a better moment.
"This is what we've been working for; we brought the team to go for breakaways like this and we had four guys in the move. It was such a massive effort." Matthews said.
"Once we got to the chase group, we were all pretty pinned because it was a very hard chase, but I think having numbers there going into the cat. 1 was definitely the key. We had all bases covered today."
Nor was there any question, head sports director Mathew Hayman told SBS and other reporters, of Jayco trying to bring Matthews back up to the front, once Plapp, Schmid and a group of eight other riders had got away.
"Plappy was on the radio saying 'Guys, you don't have to move this forward, it's on everyone else to keep Bling [Matthews] off the back'. The guys were in a luxurious situation; they could sit back, follow, and Michael was also pulling through but he didn't need to commit as well because we had two strong riders up front."
"The final was special, Mauro was awesome, I think he'd have wrapped that up even if he was away like that or on a sprint," Plapp added after he arrived a little later.
"Mauro and I knew he'd be the quickest if he got away, and then on the descent Mattie [Hayman] told us Bling was only 30 seconds away, so we almost stopped and waited for him to come back.
"Then Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was trying to get us to roll through and we said we're waiting for Bling, but then Tim tried to launch an attack and that was when Mauro went. It was job done by then, he was always going to wrap that sprint up."
The win is definitely a timely one for Jayco-AlUla, as this is their first in a WorldTour race this season, as well as being the first in a Grand Tour since Ben O'Connor won the toughest mountain stage of the Tour de France last year over the Col de la Loze. Matthews said winning the stage into Belfort could be the beginning of even more success.
"The hardest one is the first one," Matthews, himself a triple Tour stage champion as well as the winner of the race's points competition back in the day, concluded.
"You see what QuickStep did, they won their first one [on stage 7] and now they've won three. So hopefully this is just the first of many for us in this year's Tour, too."
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