Matthews Wins Stage 10 at the Tour de France!

Stage 10 led the peloton 197 kilometers from from Escaldes to Engordany. After the rest day on Monday, the stage contained the arguably most difficult start of all stages in this year's edition of the Tour. The 22 kilometer climb right at the start of the stage provoked a number of attacks. As a result, a big lead group formed. The group of 15 riders was joined by 3 members of the ORICA-BikeExchange squad: Michael Matthews, Daryl Impey and Luke Durbridge.

The group of escapees stuck together until 30 kilometers from the finish and built a solid advantage of over 7 minutes to the main peloton. In the hilly final, several accelerations split up the lead group. The riders of ORICA-BikeExchange, however, stuck to the front part of the group and created a perfect constellation for the finish. Impey attacked multiple times on the last 10 kilometers and forced Peter Sagan to work while Matthews kept everything under control sitting on Sagan's wheel. As Impey's attacks started to fail, he chose to lead out the group for a sprint finish.

Matthews proved patient and timed his sprint perfectly to beat a hard fighting Sagan. With his win at the Tour, Matthews completed the triple of stage wins at all three Grand Tours. It was a successful start to the second week of the Tour de France for Team ORICA-BikeExchange which came to the most important cycling event targeting stage wins.