England star cyclist Matthew Richardson has withdrawn from the Commonwealth Games and a spicy clash against Australia — the country he represented at the Olympics.
Richardson controversially switched allegiances to Great Britain, just days after winning two silver medals and a bronze for Australia at the 2024 Olympics.
The shock defection laid the platform for one of the biggest showdowns of this year’s Games with Richardson set to compete against his former teammates for the first time.
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But England confirmed Richardson has been forced to withdraw due to injury.
“Unfortunately, due to an injury sustained in international racing earlier this week, Matt Richardson will no longer be able to compete for Team England at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games,” Team England said in a statement.
“We wish him a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing him back on the track soon.”
The withdrawal robs the Games of one of the spiciest rivalries in world sport.
Richardson received a life ban for competing for Australia, but despite early bitter criticism back in the country that honed his cycling talent, he’s since carved out a strikingly impressive career in GB and England skinsuits.
While Richardson has competed against Australian riders since his shock move, this would have been easily the highest-profile event where he was to go up against his former teammates.
Last week, Richardson said the bitter fallout had zero effect on him.
“I tried to block out all the negativity, and all the noise,” Richardson shrugs when recalling the initial furore surrounding his ‘defection’.
“I experienced the way they decided to handle it at the time, and moved on as quickly as I could.
“Ultimately, it has zero effect on me. If, for some reason, the British public didn’t take it well, that wouldn’t have been very good — but it wasn’t the case.”
Richardson’s still battling to be the top sprinter in the world, having won silver at last year’s worlds behind only the great Harrie Lavreysen and actually having achieved the unthinkable, defeating the flying Dutchman in the sprint at February’s European Championships
He’s twice cracked the flying 200m world record, becoming the first cyclist under nine seconds, and has made it clear he believes his advances have been down to his recent cycling education in the UK.
As he famously put it in an interview with the BBC – and a mite woundingly for his old paymasters: “A way I can probably describe it is the Australian programme is like high school, and the British programme is like Hogwarts.”
“We fly with more bikes, and more equipment, anything we need to perform at our absolute best at a given race,” he says.
“I remember doing World Cups for Australia, and I would only fly over with my race bike. I fly to races now with about four or five bikes. These things really make a difference, when a final comes down to a-thousandth-of-a-second.”
Aussie Leigh Hoffman, who won silver with Richardson in Paris, was expected to challenge his former teammate for the gold this week.
And he added fuel to the rivalry on the eve of the Games.
“The Aussies want me to smash him, the Brits want him to smash me and that’s the way it goes,” Hoffman said at the team announcement in Brisbane.
“Seeing him in GB colours probably does bring out a bit more fire in me.”
The four-day Games track cycling program starts on Thursday night (AEST) at Glasgow’s Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, with the men’s team sprint one of the first gold medals to be decided.
— With AAP
