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“I saw the opportunity to do a little bit more and give something back to<br />
the sport that almost killed me twice,” he suggests wryly.<br />
“Most of the lads on the team were amazing blokes. There were a couple<br />
who seemed to get a little entitled at being Africans on the first African<br />
team, but they didn’t last long.” I don’t enquire further to understand who<br />
he’s referring to.<br />
2017 saw the arrival of the first Irish-registered pro cycling team Aqua<br />
Blue Sport, and naturally they valued having a multiple Irish national<br />
champion on their roster. Matt got a two-year contract and hooked up<br />
once again with some UK and Irish lads he knew well. I ask what kind of<br />
experience he had racing with this team.<br />
“Year one was a right laugh. We had a great group and it was so much<br />
fun. Naturally success followed. Year two went to total shit. Expectations<br />
were crazy high and we all paid the price for some stupidly overambitious<br />
aspirations. At the end of the day the owners had no idea about cycling. As<br />
soon as they got more involved it went to shit.”<br />
The team rapidly grew in status as a ProContinental outfit and gained<br />
perhaps some eyebrow-raising invites to top races in their first year. The<br />
team owner later suggested he’d bought his way into those races. I ask<br />
what this suggests about the state of pro cycling.<br />
“As far as I’m aware it’s pretty common practice. But it does my head in that<br />
it’s become a general conception that cycling is ‘broken’. Formula 1 drivers<br />
buy their way onto teams, is F1 broken? It’s existed for many years as is and<br />
it is totally fine. If anything it’s overambition and greed that’s going to kill<br />
our sport eventually.”<br />
With the benefit of hindsight, the Aqua Blue Sport experiment was<br />
perhaps fatally flawed from the start. Rick Delaney had the ambition to<br />
create a self-sustaining business model that funded the team through<br />
sales of cycling-related products via a now-defunct online retail site.<br />
Riders appeared to lack confidence in the equipment. Was the experiment<br />
always doomed to failure?<br />
“From day one the sums didn’t add up. We were told ABS would take 5%<br />
commission from sales. We apparently spent over £2m in our first season.<br />
That would take a bigger turnover than Chain Reaction & Wiggle put<br />
together if my maths are correct! There was definitely some other hidden<br />
agenda. We were asked to test equipment the year previous. It was tested<br />
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