In his latest journal entry, Rayner Foundation-supported rider Mattie Dodd steps up to the Netcompany INEOS WorldTour team for a block of Italian racing, helps Kévin Vauquelin to overall victory at the Giro d’Abruzzo, and spends his Worlds debut in Montreal up the road, in the five-man break that produced the under-23 world champion.
Everything about racing in Italy seems to be tainted with at least a little bit of chaos. It’s found in, among other areas, the road surface, the course design, and just a general, fairly laid-back approach to the task of organising a bike race, along with the consequences of that somewhat nonchalant way of going about it. That’s not something that seems to change from .2 to .1 level, at least not from what I’ve seen. It’s reflected in the way races are raced, and I think that chaos is what makes them enjoyable, once you learn how to surf it. If you don’t, I guess you just drown.
I’ve come to this conclusion after a short block of racing in Italy with the WorldTour team, so I’m not entirely qualified to say with certainty that it’s like that right up to the Giro, but my experiences suggest that the Italian peninsula isn’t exactly where you go in search of order and tranquillity, in bike racing terms. I don’t dislike the lack of predictability and the presence of general disorder, but I’m referring to the racing style when I talk about that. The somewhat lax approach to general course security is perhaps a different matter.
That was at the Memorial Marco Pantani, my first time with the WorldTour team, and my first time racing in the infamous grey bib shorts. I like them, and I’m choosing to ignore any other opinions on the matter. End of.
You’d be surprised how often bike racing is influenced by playground politics
That was followed by the Giro d’Abruzzo. As we were the only team with WorldTour status, the onus fell on us to do large parts of the controlling, which we did. Well, until an unnamed team that also enjoyed success at the race didn’t answer our request for aid, and we promptly held that against them for the remainder of the stages whenever possible. You’d be surprised how often bike racing is influenced by playground politics.
My time spent in semi-hypnosis on the front of the bunch proved worthwhile, with Kévin Vauquelin winning the race outright. You could see how much he wanted to put his hands in the air for the first time since coming to the team, so playing a role in that was a great feeling, as was seeing how pleased he was. Not that I knew he’d won until I finished myself; my only knowledge of the race situation before that came from inaudible chatter on the radio, with about one in every 10 words coming even faintly close to comprehensible.
He then proceeded to get lost. The route from the finish to the bus parking was fairly well marked, at first at least. By the time doping control and the podium presentation were done, an over-eager organiser in charge of removing signage had left the winner of the whole thing to navigate his way through the Abruzzese countryside with little more than gut feeling and dead reckoning. Given that, the amount of time he was actually delayed for was really quite respectable.
Speaking of the French and random places — Montreal. I may have just made an enemy of both the Canadians and the French with that statement, but I’m in too deep to back out now. I was there for World Champs, not to see a shining example of region-wide bilingualism, though the amount of English actually spoken was significantly less than expected, given my view of North America, largely shaped by breaking news headlines and poor-quality action films.
Very good bike paths, I’ll give them that — clearly the Canadians have come to the realisation that routing a bike path directly through parking bays sort of entirely defeats the point
An 0900 start to our race meant there was no reason to even try to fight the jetlag — I’d have to be up at five on race day anyway, so why make an unholy amount of rice and Coco Pops (brilliant combo, for those interested) at that hour any more of a challenge? The few days before the race, alongside the usual pre-race preparation (which I’ll skip, because I doubt you’ll find the statistics behind my intervals that enthralling), were a bit of a chance to explore the area. Turns out there was nothing to see. It was nice to look at, fairly tranquil and very green, but north of the city really didn’t have much going on in terms of variety. Very good bike paths, I’ll give them that — clearly the Canadians have come to the realisation that routing a bike path directly through parking bays sort of entirely defeats the point (I’m looking at you, TfL).
The race itself was awesome. Once it started, that is. I’ve got to the stage in my career now where nerves have become normalised to the point where I don’t really give them a second thought. This was different, though — I’ve not been that nervous in a good while. Based on the lack of talking among the riders dotted around the team pens, that was a fairly universal feeling. Not surprising, though: it was the biggest race of all our lives to date, and we went straight onto a circuit that severely punished momentary lapses in attention, with no luxury of a flat lead-in like the one afforded to the elite races.
Our plan was hatched in a poorly lit Holiday Inn room the previous night. It essentially revolved around grabbing the race by the horns and making sure we were the kamikaze pilots, as opposed to those desperately manning the anti-aircraft guns in defence. That meant trying to put one of us up the road in the first half of the race and then trying to create the small-group finish ideal for Elliot Rowe.
Being up the road, on the front foot, in a GB jersey at World Champs, with one of my best mates from Tirol there as well — that isn’t something that fades from memory quickly
I ended up fulfilling that first part, though I got there with the help of some adept cornering coupled with a fairly genius feigned inability to corner as a team, if we may smugly point out. It ended up being one of the coolest races I’ve done. Being up the road, on the front foot, in a GB jersey at World Champs, with one of my best mates from Tirol [Ed: Tirol-KTM, Mattie’s team from 2023 to 2025] there as well — that isn’t something that fades from memory quickly. [Ed: The five-man break also included Ashlin Barry of the USA, who went clear of it with 30 kilometres to go and won the under-23 world title solo.]
Did we get the result we came for as a team? No, we didn’t. But we executed a plan to the best of our physical ability on the day, and didn’t have any regrets (other than maybe my trying to attack the break with 80 kilometres to go, but I’ll put my hand up and say that was me getting a bit overexcited after misinterpreting some slightly unclear orders received from the roadside…).
I ended up finishing the year with Il Lombardia Under 23 and the Coppa Città di San Daniele, both, of course, complete with the usual enjoyable chaos of the peninsula, the like of which I referenced earlier. I’ll admit I maybe added a little bit of my own (albeit somewhat less enjoyable) with a slightly comical low-speed crash around a hairpin in Lombardia, of which I was the sole casualty.
It’s at this point that I could write something a bit naff about how that rounds out my U23 years and I’m looking forward to next year after a bit of time off. I don’t want to write about that, though, and you don’t want to read it, because it’s all fairly self-explanatory and has been said a lot before by lots of other people in multiple different ways. Reading that back, it sounds way too aggressive, but you get my drift. I don’t think I can officially say yet what I’m up to next year, but I am not a U23 anymore, I am looking forward to next year, and I have had some time off (I apologise for having contributed to the plague of “Morning Hikes” that have taken over Strava recently). I shall leave you on that cryptic note.
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