After finishing second on his WorldTour debut, and picking up two wins with Visma-Lease a Bike’s development squad, Matthew Brennan has now scored his first pro victory, continuing a stellar season start.
The 19-year-old Brit won the GP de Denain on Thursday, sprinting from a breakaway group of eight riders. The victory came on Brennan’s 11th race day this year since he graduated to his team’s WorldTour squad.
The step-up, in his words, has been “perfect” so far.
“You couldn’t wish for a better season, to be honest. I’m really happy,” Brennan said in Denain.
Previously won by the likes of Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), the cobbled GP de Denain is a longstanding one-day classic, held in the same part of northern France as Paris-Roubaix. This year’s edition stretched out 197.4km, with 13 cobbled sectors totalling almost 24km.
“It’s really nice to win here. It’s something we really aimed for as a team, and I’m really thankful for the work they did today,” Brennan said. “It was tough for positioning today, but once you were there, it was alright. You go into a rhythm, you come out the otherside, and you look back, and it’s just one line.”
All 13 of the cobbled sectors came in the second half of the event, with Brennan’s breakaway group forming with around 50km to go. “It was a big group, and I knew quite a lot of the boys wanted to attack. It was quite hard to manage it,” he said.
“Coming into the finish, I kind of knew I had a faster sprint than probably most of the guys there, and that gave me a bit of confidence coming into the final.”
Former gravel world champion Gianni Vermeersch (Alpecin-Deceuninck) came second, while Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale’s Dries De Bondt finished third. Brennan was the fifth youngest rider on the 154-strong start list.
The teenager joined Visma-Lease a Bike’s development arm last season having come through the UK-based Fensham Howes-MAS Design junior team.
Brennan made his WorldTour debut this January, finishing second in the bunch sprint on the opening stage of the Santos Tour Down Under.
“We still have no idea what kind of rider I exactly am, which is an exciting thing,” he told Cycling Weekly at the time. “We’ve got quite a nice span of weapons, shall we say. The one that’s shining out a bit more at the moment is sprinting, and we’re following through with that, but if something changes, then we can work with that. The coaches are excited to see what I turn out to be.”
A fast finisher on the road, Brennan has also won track accolades, earning two world titles at the UCI Junior Track World Championships in 2023.
