A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIEND
WHEN DID YOU TWO FIRST MEET?
MICHAEL MATTHEWS: I think Nico wants to answer this one…
NICHOLAS ROCHE: The first time I met Michael was in 2010. He was visiting Verese and we met for a panino with some other Australians and I thought he was a surfer guy coming on holiday, and then I realised he had just become world champion. It’s quite funny because sometimes you meet riders and you don’t really remember the first time you met them, but that day I just remember feeling so stupid when Simon Clarke told me, ‘This guy has just become world champion in the under-23s’. I was like, ‘Really? This guy looks like a surfer.’
Obviously our friendship over the years has grown and we have similar interests. When I came to Monaco we were not on the same teams but once in a while we would catch up, and once we were on the training rides we found out it was very easy to talk to each other. And then once I moved to the team [in 2019], at the beginning Michael was key to introducing me into the team, he spent a lot of time with me on camps and then we got to
