Mattie Dodd journal: gods, guardrails and the Dutch mountains

In his latest journal entry, Rayner Foundation-supported rider Mattie Dodd charts an Odyssean opening block — a prologue win in Rhodes, a crash into a hedge, and a crosswind education at Olympia’s Tour.

In a way befitting of its location, my first race block of the year drew some clear Odyssean parallels. Ok, maybe not that clear, but bear with me on this. It had its fair share of ups and downs, took place in Greece and felt like a long time as I neared the end of it. Close enough.

The block encompassed three one-day races and a four-day stage race across nearly three weeks on Rhodes – basically the Greek Isle of Man. The first two of those one-days being classed .1s and the second two races .2s. I don’t have nearly the characters to explain the slightly impenetrable UCI race classification system, so I’ll leave you to spend a few hours getting your head around that another time. The main difference was that the .1s saw a few ProConti teams turn up on the hunt for UCI points (again, I’ll let you go down that delightful rabbit hole of a system I’ve just glossed over).

Neither of those first three races were performances I was particularly chuffed with. I’d done my work for the team well in all three, but I hadn’t felt that I’d met my own personal standards

Neither of those first three races were performances I was particularly chuffed with. I’d done my work for the team well in all three, but I hadn’t felt that I’d met my own personal standards in terms of how I felt and performed at a given stage of the race. That’s not the first time I’ve been disappointed with how I opened my season – I’ve seen it before where I find I take a few races to get back into the swing of things, whether that’s physically or otherwise is something I’m yet to figure out.

It was initially planned that I’d only do that first .1 and the stage race. An illness that created the urge to evacuate stomach contents meant I ended up racing twice more. This wasn’t something unique to us by any means whatsoever. Every team stayed in the same hotel, and every team was affected by a similar illness. It was really pretty bizarre; you could tell how badly affected a team was by how many riders went out on their recovery rides. As a team, we went through enough hand sanitizer (INEOS own brand, of course) that I can’t be 100% certain we’d pass a breathalyser test, yet still saw our share of casualties.

Tour of Rhodes powered by Rodos Palace (UCI 2.2) Stage 1, Rhodes, Greece, 13/3/2026. © 2026 Nassos Triantafyllou / CYCLINGPHOTOS.GR

Going into the stage race, despite a few touch-and-go moments, we did manage to field a full team. Not that said team could be of much mutual benefit beyond moral support during the opening 2km prologue. So, while we’d all love to take a bit of credit for Cam’s win [Ed: Cameron Rogers], that was down to him, and him alone. He was red-hot favourite for that opening effort – I’d quite confidently put him in the top five prologue riders in cycling, WorldTour included. When he’s beaten some bloke called Ganna in a three-minute effort, we may have been using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I’d quite confidently put him in the top five prologue riders in cycling, WorldTour included

When the team aspect did come into play was the first full road stage. As the team with yellow, the onus was on us to do the controlling, to which we duly obliged. In our heads at least, this saw us revert to the tactic reminiscent of the Froome-era Sky days where we plonked the entire team on the front and spent the first half of the day ensuring no dreams of early break success would come even close to fruition. Of course, this tactic is a double-edged sword. While the race was under our control for the first half, it meant a limited number for when the race kicked off in the second half – those who’d been slaving away on the front paid for their earlier hard labour and left three of us to handle the second half. I’ll save the blow-by-blow detail, but essentially it was a bunch sprint, and by virtue of the narrow margins of the day prior and the bonus seconds on offer, we lost yellow. For now, at least.

The following day’s course continued the theme that linked every race’s parcours on the island – they were basically all on the same roads. Given Rhodes itself isn’t that big, and the number of viable roads to send 150 lycra-clad idiots along also not particularly numerous (they were either massive A-roads or farm tracks, not much in between), most of the roads we raced on became fairly familiar by the end of the three weeks. There were more than a few occasions where I sensed a collective recognition by the whole bunch of having rejoined a familiar road, sort of the same way my dog clocks she’s just turned back onto our street.

The stage ended with a mass sprint up a 1km climb, all earlier action eventually amounting to nothing. We executed our lead-out well, Cam rewarding us with a third on the stage. More importantly, he was back into yellow though.

Tour of Rhodes powered by Rodos Palace (UCI 2.2) Stage 2, Rhodes, Greece, 14/3/2026. © 2026 Nassos Triantafyllou / CYCLINGPHOTOS.GR

Holding yellow on the final day of the race was always going to be a big task. We gave it everything we had, and rode the race in a way we can be proud of with our limited numbers, though didn’t manage to beat the odds. As far as a first stage race as a team goes though, I’m inclined to use the line from the cinematic masterpiece that is Babe, “That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”

I’ve got a game to play with you, dear reader, while we’re here. Say Rider X is in a group behind his teammate, who’s holding yellow. In the same group is the rider in 2nd on GC. Do you, A. pull to get back and help your leader, or B. sit on to avoid bringing 2nd back into contention?

Well, I just so happened to be in this exact scenario, believe it or not. After posing the question to the team car, I was told to pull – said GC leader had been dropped from the group ahead. I took option A as a result, though for all of about thirty seconds.

I completely overcooked a dusty corner, went wide and flipped over a guardrail, landing upside down in a hedge

I completely overcooked a dusty corner, went wide and flipped over a guardrail, landing upside down in a hedge. For a fairly spectacular crash, I was pretty much fine – other than bruising to both knee and ego.

I’m not going to lie; it was a really disappointing week on a personal level. The combination of an appalling TT, failing to navigate the wind and subsequent echelons, and the general chaos of the race (a different kind to that I’ve come to grow used to over the past few years) meant I left the race pretty downbeat. I won’t sit here and deny that my legs have been at the level I’ve come to expect over the past year either. Am I a million miles off? No, definitely not, but Olympia’s is absolutely a race where failing to navigate the magical ways of the echelon effectively can only be fixed by a true freak of nature.

Watch a rider trying to jump between echelons from the heli shot — it’s like watching someone slowly strangle a puppy. It’s excruciating, both to watch and attempt

Watch a rider trying to jump between echelons from the heli shot — it’s like watching someone slowly strangle a puppy. It’s excruciating, both to watch and attempt. Racing in crosswinds is something that needs to be experienced to be learnt though – no amount of using cutlery to simulate a race truly teaches you how to do it. It’s been a while since I’ve done a race where echelons have been the deciding factor, so a crash course (pun intended in this scenario) in this unique type of racing gave me the chance to jog my mind about how to hide from the “Dutch mountains”.

Putting that week behind me, I’ve now got just under a month before my next block. Among other things, it gives me the chance to temporarily halt the living out of a suitcase that I’ve been doing for the last few months having just moved flat. The collection of toothbrushes I’ve built up, their predecessors having temporarily gone missing in action, are now finally reunited in a common area. That said, I can’t entirely rule out their future misplacement in another corner of Europe in the coming few months.