A start at Pegasus Bridge, 232 kilometres of central France interrupted by a level crossing, and a queen stage breathed through a paper straw: Mattie Dodd on a Tour de l’Avenir opened up to development teams.
Rachel Galler, Anna Boniface and Phoebe Roche race for FTP–Fulfil The Potential Racing. In August, a composite team took them to the revived Philadelphia Cycling Classic, where they found WorldTour opposition, packed streets and a city that seemed genuinely pleased to have a bike race in its midst.
A start at Pegasus Bridge, 232 kilometres of central France interrupted by a level crossing, and a queen stage breathed through a paper straw: Mattie Dodd on a Tour de l’Avenir opened up to development teams.
Cycling has spent a decade opening the front door to new women, and almost none of it rethinking what happens once they are inside. In her second journal entry, Tizzie Robinson-Gordon writes from the interior: the chaingang, the feed zone, and the surprise that never stops.
For every British rider the move to a European team has worked for, camsmajaco co-manager Ian Mansel-Thomas can point to another it hasn’t. In his second journal entry he argues that the problem isn’t Europe but the age at which riders go: 16, with school, exams, and friendships all still at home.
Hope Inglis returns with the second entry in her 2026 journal for The British Continental. Looking back from the end of a placement in an air-conditioned Birmingham office, the London Academy rider describes keeping a racing season going around a full-time job — the annual leave spent driving to a muddy field in Belgium, the week she commuted to work from a campervan, and the tan lines her work trousers hide.
George Stephen returns with the second entry in his 2026 journal for The British Continental. Writing from Mallorca after burnout forced him out of the National Championships, the BCC Race Team rider and Nottingham student pays tribute to the people who never appear on the results list — but without whom no bike rider gets anywhere.
Fifth in the national time trial on caffeine alone, then two laps of bluff and counter-bluff in Aberystwyth that settled the under-23 title — Mattie Dodd on a Nationals he can barely remember, and a stand-off he could not win.
A first UCI win on stage 4 of the Ronde de l’Isard, a week of donkey work in the Alps and eight summits’ worth of climbing points at the Giro d’Italia Next Gen — Mattie Dodd on the best month of his season, and the prize he has since mislaid.
A week at the Tour de Bretagne leaves Mattie Dodd feeling the strongest he has all season, if without the result to show for it — before fighter jets, First World War mines and his new team’s first road race win enliven a run through the Ardennes and Flanders.
