Matthew Brennan had just won three successive bike races, including one – the GP Denain – that really got the cycling world sitting up and taking notice of him. But when his phone rang after his latest victory for Visma-Lease a Bike, the 19-year-old couldn’t quite fathom the message. “It was an interesting call because they said: ‘Matthew, can you ride the Volta a Catalunya? You’re gonna replace Jonas’. And I was there like: ‘Jonas? Guys, I’m not a climber!’”
Brennan is not a climber, no, but like Jonas Vingegaard, the man he substituted at Catalunya, he is a winner. And a serial one. The neo-pro Briton accepted the invitation to take the place of the two-time Tour de France winner and duly won the first stage of the Catalan race, extending his winning run to four-in-a-row. “My first WorldTour win is really cool and something I’ll always remember,” he said after his victory. Speak to those in and around him, and his victory in Sant Feliu de Guíxols will not be his last in the sport's upper echelons. Cycling better get used to Matthew Brennan.
‘He blew us away’
Hailing from the north-east town of Darlington, Brennan began cycling with Stockton Wheelers – the largest club in his area. From there, he progressed as a junior rider with Great Britain’s junior track program and Fensham Howes-MAS Design, the team that is owned and run by Tom Pidcock’s father, Giles. In 2023, while Brennan was sitting his A-levels that he top scored in, Robbert de Groot, head of development at Visma-Lease a Bike, was first made aware of the blonde-haired teenager. “We saw potential in short time trials, in small bunch sprints after a hard race, and probably as a Classics rider,” the Dutchman told Rouleur. He signed him on a two-year contract.
Originally, the blueprint for success with Brennan wasn’t anything out-of-the-ordinary. “It was a simple plan. 'OK, Matthew, let’s see if in two years we can make you better to get you a pro career’. We showed him our strategies for training and nutrition, our approach to mental and personal development, and our racing and tactics ideas. We didn’t speak much about salary – it was a little bit of pocket money because the main thing was to develop him after he finished school.”
But then, on the team’s very first get-together ahead of the 2024 season, Brennan surprised everyone. “We did some exercises and myself and my colleagues said: ‘holy shit, did we just see what we thought we saw?’ We waited a bit and did some testing in the December camp and again we said: ‘are we really saying what we’re seeing?’” What was impressive? “I don’t want to go into too much detail because it’s the weapons we look for, but it was his physical ability combined with his approach: riding well, resting well, and asking the right questions,” De Groot explained. “Then in January, it was the third time he blew us away.” When Brennan made his debut for Visma’s development team in Croatia at the Trofej Umag, he won. And four days later, he won again. “The same thing happened with Olav Kooij,” De Groot pointed out, “we realised he was going to be a lot better than average.”
Within a few months, Brennan, still 18, made his debut for the Visma senior team, finishing third at the Circuit de Wallonie to share a podium with winner Arnaud De Lie. He impressed again for the WorldTour team at the Rund um Köln, and was woken up one morning at 7am last May by his agent Andrew McQuaid. “I was thinking, what does he want at 7am,” Brennan recalled. “He said: ‘Visma want you in their WorldTour team. What do you think?’ I obviously said yes.”
‘Still trial-and-error’
Aware they’ve got a diamond in their possession, Visma signed Brennan to a three-year contract, with a well-thought-out master plan in place to extract the best from him. His start as a professional rider has been characteristically explosive and immediate, second on stage one of the Tour Down Under, and then those four consecutive wins, the first two of which were taken while representing the development team. “I asked him the other day how he’s feeling all the stress and pressure because of the attention,” De Groot said, “and he replied, ‘I’m not really. It’s no different from what I’m used to when I leave my house in Darlington!” He’s extremely mature for his age.”
That said, Brennan – who doesn’t turn 20 until August – is experiencing a number of pinch-me moments. “It’s quite a privilege to race with some of these names and to be in the peloton,” he said after his win in northern Spain, projecting an innocence of not quite believing his success. The day after, he narrowly finished second in a sprint, just losing out to his compatriot Ethan Vernon. “I was suffering a little bit on the climbs, but it’s really nice when you have Sepp Kuss pulling for you. That’s something special,” he said.
His rich vein of form has not only made the sport take notice, but also altered Visma’s plan for him. “We will likely not race him in any more .2 races, only WorldTour and ProSeries races,” De Groot said. “Catalunya wasn’t on his roster but because Jonas pulled out, we decided to test Matthew’s level there. And, well, the test has gone pretty well, so we said we can’t have a rider with a WorldTour victory and two second places in .2 races anymore. So he’ll do the Tour de Romandie, Tour of Norway and National Championships before a summer break.
“In a certain way, it’s still trial and error with him. What kind of result can we expect from him in a race like Romandie? Can he also work as a high-class domestique for other people in certain races? It’s a challenge for us to find that out, but it’s no secret that we have somebody with a lot of sprinting talent for hard finishes and hard racing.”
Brennan’s victories will naturally lead to Brits pondering if a successor to Mark Cavendish has been found, but De Groot played down any such comparison. “Just look at the results he’s had and that makes no sense: Cav never won an uphill sprint after 3,000m of climbing, but that’s what Matthew did in Catalunya. As a real sprinter, I have my doubts a little bit, not because of the person or his qualities, but because he’s 67.5kg – he can fit into the back pocket of Jonathan Milan! But depending on the circuit, he can compete in bunch sprints, for sure. Mark Cavendish was a completely different rider in a completely different era, and I don’t want to compare them because Matthew Brennan is Matthew Brennan.” He certainly is – remember the name.
