Cyclist Dominique Mayho On International Return
[Written by Stephen Wright]
Dominique Mayho said the opportunity to race in a team with Bermuda’s exciting crop of young cyclists has inspired him to come out of international retirement.
Mayho will lead a group including Conor White, Nicholas Narraway, Liam Flannery, and Zander Miller at the Vuelta Independencia Nacional in the Dominican Republic, which starts on Monday.
Kaden Hopkins has ruled himself out of the seven-stage road race to focus on his promising start to the season with Spanish outfit Equipo Essax.
It is the first time in decades that the Bermuda Bicycle Association [BBA] has assembled a team strong enough to race internationally; it is a line-up that Mayho believes has the hunger and talent to challenge for honours.
“We can do really well in the team classification; I think we have one of the strongest teams,” Mayho told Bernews.
“It would have been great to have Kaden, but the other guys are talented riders and ready to go.
“It’s amazing to have five young riders on the same level, on good quality teams overseas, racing internationally. It means we can go to big races and compete.”
Mayho thought his days racing on the international stage were over after missing out on the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, Australia, in 2018.
He had scaled back his training in recent years but said he was coaxed into representing Bermuda again by a persuasive Peter Dunne, the BBA president, and has been clocking up the miles to prepare for the challenge ahead.
It appears the “elder statesman” role suits Mayho, with the 28-year-old adamant he still has the power, tenacity and knowhow to win a sprint stage with the help of his younger charges.
“Peter keeps on pulling me back,” Mayho said. “Every time I feel like I want to stop, he tricks me into coming back!
“My main focus is to help the team through things that it took me years to learn so they don’t make the same mistakes as I did.
“The small things add up a lot; knowing when to eat, when to go to the team kart to get extra water bottles, how to save energy.
“It’s great that we now have a team to compete at races; it’s inspired me to come out of retirement.
“I haven’t felt this motivated to ride for a very long time. I’ll be giving it my all to get a stage win.”
Mayho, who spent two years racing as an amateur in Belgium, believes Bermuda have a well-rounded team whose strengths and weaknesses complement each other in the sprint and mountain stages.
“We have different riders with different characteristics,” said Mayho, who represented the island at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto.
“On the flat stages, I’m the fastest sprinter, so the guys will be helping me to get a good result, whereas on the hilly stages, Nic, Liam and Zander are better suited.
“Conor can pretty much do everything; he’s the strongest rider and could do something impressive.
“It all comes down to the mountain stage, a steep hour-long climb at the end. That’s where all the time will be gained or lost. We need to ride smart and get our top three guys high up, as it’s the top-three finishes that count each stage [in the team classification].”
In previous years, the BBA has had to merge its top riders with other Caribbean nations such as Puerto Rico to compete at the annual race, a 2.2 event on the UCI America Tour.
However, they will have one less member than their rivals as the void left by Hopkins could not be filled despite approaches made to Tyler Smith, who was unavailable as he prepares for his international triathlon campaign.
Dunne, the BBA president, said he fully understood and respected Hopkins’s decision to continue his season in Spain.
“It’s a great opportunity for Bermuda to have a true national team with six riders, which in theory we could with Kaden,” Dunne said.
“As we look to continue this journey of improving at the national level, the next step for us is to have team depth.
“There are a lot of opportunities to compete internationally as a national team. Typically, we’ve only sent one guy like Dominque or Kaden, or back in the day Tyler Butterfield, Kris Hedges or Elliott Hubbard.
“I know I’m not supposed to say, ‘We’re going there to win the team competition,’ but, effectively, that’s what we’re trying to do.”
