The way Mattie Dodd talks about getting a spot on the first year of Ineos Grenadiers’ new development team, it all sounds like it was inevitable. Learning to ride a bike, going to Herne Hill, joining Austrian team Tirol KTM, then Ineos Grenadiers Racing Academy. Simple.
“I learned to ride a bike, and sort of just loved it ever since,” he tells Cycling Weekly. “I always really loved riding. The obvious place to go from there was Herne Hill. My parents saw the holiday club, and thought that was brilliant, 10 quid and we get to send them off all day, it was good for all parties. I just sort of went from there.
“Much to my parents’ annoyance, maybe it came above school at times, but as I went through Herne Hill, every year it got more and more serious. I feel like I’ve just followed the natural progression of someone who wants to get to where I am now. I don’t need to tell you how many people have come through there.”
(Image credit: Ineos Grenadiers)
It was his results at the end of 2025 which must have caught Ineos’ eye, but his year wasn’t simple.
“I started quite late because I had Epstein-Barr for the second half of 2024, I basically didn’t train properly for 10 months,” Dodd says. “My first 20-hour week was in March or something. It took me a while to get going. I sort of felt like I was getting better every week, and then I got on a bit of a roll in August through to mid-October. That’s where my best results came, I guess.”
The team was only announced mid-December, with 12 riders getting the nod, with Dodd one of the lucky dozen. “It all happened quite late. I’d sort of verbally agreed to stay at the same team but then it changed. I grabbed it with both hands, because why wouldn’t you.”
“I think I’m the only guy on the team without an agent, so I’m basically being my own agent,” he continues. “It’s a case of finding the right email, banging your head on the door and trying to give them no excuse to say no. All my results came quite late in the year for various reasons, so that made things a bit tight time wise, but it came through eventually.”
His future as a rider is still yet to be decided, at 21, but a WorldTour development team seems like the best place to finesse that, with the help of the Rayner Foundation.
“I could probably fit anywhere along the spectrum of leadout rider all the way to mid-mountain support type of thing,” Dodd explains. “I’d say most obviously I’m like a breakaway-style Classics rider, like Quinn Simmons, Harry Sweeny. I guess that would be the best way to describe me.”
As for what the team is like, it’s all brand new: “I knew of people before, but I’d never spent extended periods of time with any of them. But yeah, I think quite quickly, we’re all getting on quite well. Over half is Anglophone, and everyone speaks good English, I think the group gels quite well together.”
Dodd has got to where he thinks he should be, but that is not the end of the journey. Asked what he would like 2026 to hold, he replies: “I’d love to give an inventive answer, but I guess the plan is to just turn WorldTour, or take a step towards it certainly. That would be the eventual goal, and it’s a good place to do that from.”
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