Christian Meier replaces Michael Matthews

Orica-GreenEdge’s directeur sportif Matt White knows that feeling of posing for the official pre-Tour de France photo and not starting the actual race as he crashed while training in the morning before the prologue in Liège back in 2004. His protégé Michael Matthews attended the opening ceremony in the Leeds Arena on Thursday evening but was replaced the next morning on the start list by Canada’s Christian Meier as he appeared unable to race because of his injured left hand.
“My withdrawal was really a last minute one”, White remembered. “Michael’s crash happened on Tuesday so the question of replacing him came earlier than in my case ten years ago. I was disappointed to miss out on my first participation to the Tour de France and Michael is obviously disappointed as well but as a team we have to put that behind us and move on.”
“I was on a short holiday in Las Vegas when I got the phone call from Whitey on Tuesday”, Meier told letour.fr. “We talked about the possibility that I’d ride the Tour but he was not sure how serious it was for Michael. On Wednesday, I was asked to come over and I arrived in England on Thursday evening, from Vancouver, Canada. I might feel the jet lag in the first few days. But I think I’m physically well prepared for the Tour. I was on the long list and I did the same races as the other guys in the past few weeks. This is my first Tour too. I’m very excited. The Tour is every rider’s dream.”
“Michael and Christian are very different riders for sure”, White explained. “Christian is a super super domestique. We didn’t consider replacing a sprinter by another sprinter. Matt Goss was not ready for the Tour de France after his crash at the Tour de Suisse. The replacement changes a little bit our plans. But we were not coming to target the bunch sprints at the Tour de France anyway.”
Orica-GreenEdge’s first goal is for Liège-Bastogne-Liège winner Simon Gerrans to take the yellow jersey again at the end of stage 2 as he did last year in Corsica.