Canberra cyclist Michael Matthews confused over Tour de France chances

Matthews put his personal ambitions on hold and spent the year preparing to help teammate Tom Dumoulin's bid to win the Tour.

But a knee injury not only forced Dumoulin out of the Giro d'Italia, but next month's Tour as well.

It's thrown Sunweb's Tour plans out the door and means they'll need a new plan before it starts on July 6.

They have to decide whether to stick with the original idea of targeting the general classification with a new rider, potentially Wilco Kelderman.

Or they could change tack and build a team around Matthews with the goal of reclaiming the sprinter's green jersey he won in 2017.

Matthews feels he needs that help if he's to beat Peter Sagan, who has won it six of the past seven years.

As well as the green jersey, he's also won three stages at the Tour - one in 2016 and then two the following year.

The only problem is, that's not what Matthews has been training for.

He's been building his endurance around supporting Dumoulin in the mountains, rather than working on his sprint.

"I've been making sure I can climb really well, making sure I can do a really good [team time trial] to support him as best as possible," Matthews told Dutch broadcaster NOS.

"It's definitely hard to take in the news [about Dumoulin].

"I haven't done any sprint training or any training that was preparing myself for my stages, and there are quite a lot of stages that do suit me.

"It's massively disappointing, obviously. I don't know what to do now, I'm totally confused.

"Even the plans to go up to Livigno from here to make sure I was really ready in the mountains to support Tom [are up in the air].

"It's just a massive disappointment, to be honest, and I don't know where to go from here."

Matthews is currently racing in the Tour de Suisse, where he finished second on stage four and third on stage one, as well as spending a few days on the podium for the general classification.

But with the race heading into the mountains he's slipped down the pecking order.

The 28-year-old revealed Sunweb had put all their eggs in the Dumoulin yellow jersey basket.

Matthews had wanted to ride the Giro to target the purple sprinter's jersey there, but that was put aside for Dumoulin to ride it instead.

It's meant Matthews doesn't have the usual kick in his legs as he would if preparing as a sprinter.

"It's been a big journey to this point," he said.

"All the talk before the year started was around supporting Tom for the yellow jersey in the Tour de France.

"I was really hoping to ride the Giro, to go for the purple jersey, but that changed as Tom did the Giro also, and now he's out of the Tour also, so yeah, our plans pretty much flipped upside down.

"The team's goal was to go for Tom 100 per cent.

"[Sunweb team manager Iwan Spekenbrink] told us from the start of the year that we shouldn't have any ambitions ourselves - it's just everything for the yellow."