Matthew Riccitello Shakes Off Tour de France Crash, Ready To Be Seixas’ Last Man in the Mountains

Matthew Riccitello was among the many riders wearing fresh bandages at Tuesday’s Tour de France start in Carcassonne.

The American climber escaped without serious injury after Monday’s mass crash in a brutal introduction to racing in July.

Despite some cuts and scrapes, the 24-year-old Arizonan says he expects to be ready for his designated role of protecting French phenom Paul Seixas in the high mountains.

“It’s not ideal to go down like that, and obviously it would have been nice for that not to have happened,” Riccitello said.

“But it’s still a long race, and my job is to be there with Paul in the high mountains, and that hasn’t changed. I think I’ll still be able to do that.”

The Decathlon-CMA CGM rider rolled to the start Tuesday with kinesiology tape on his right knee and bandages covering his left elbow after hitting the deck in one of the Tour’s first major pileups.

Riccitello said he rode through the pain after getting caught up in the pileup just three days in his first Tour.

“The first 30 minutes after the crash, I had pretty bad knee pain, and it was one of those things where I couldn’t pedal much with the right leg,” he said. “Then as the stage went on, it got better, which is good, and today also not too bad, so it should be good to go.”

It was a brutal welcome to the Tour de France.

Poised to pull for Seixas

Riccitello was a surprise addition to the Decathlon-CMA CGM squad to protect Paul Seixas in what is the Tour debut for both riders.

“Matthew will be a very important rider for Paul during this Tour,” Decathlon sport director Julien Jordie told Velo. “He has shown all season is very strong and we expect him to be with Paul in the high mountains during the race.”

Riccitello’s job comes later in the third week, but there’s already a big day looming Thursday over the Tourmalet ending at Gavarnie in the Pyrénées.

Fifth in last year’s Vuelta a España, Riccitello said he’ll be riding for Seixas as long as the young Frenchman’s in contention. Any talk of perhaps chasing a stage win is not on the radar right now.

On Monday, he was among dozens of riders caught in the crash, including Mathias Vacek, Bruno Armirail, Tobias Foss, Thymen Arensman, Josh Tarling and Michał Kwiatkowski.

“From what it looks like, someone came up the inside of Bruno Armirail and took him out, and that just caused the bowling-ball effect and took a bunch of us out,” Riccitello said Tuesday. “There wasn’t really anything I could do, but I’m mostly all good.”

Riccitello said he had no place to go and couldn’t avoid the spill.