Tending to the needs of the riders is what Sandra Hodnett has been doing for much of her working life - and she's earned a reputation as being one of the best in the business. The Orica-GreenEDGE soigneur has worked for CSC, US Postal, Garmin and now Australia's only WorldTour team.
By Brian Canty
Well-known and well-documented might be the work of female Irish soigneurs Emma O’Reilly and Stacey Kelly but one west Cork woman has somehow managed to escape our attention up until now.
Sandra Hodnett has worked with some of the world’s best teams, from CSC and US Postal in the early noughties before moving on to Garmin in its various guises.
There, while based in Girona, she worked for six years and at present she’s one of the key players behind the scenes at Orica-GreenEdge.
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Born in Ballineen before moving to Cork city and later to the US where she first got on the cycling payroll, Hodnett is currently based in the Basque town of Leon where she’s furthering her education and training in osteopathy.
In between her studies she’s got quite a schedule and this year alone she’s been in Australia, Qatar, Oman, all over the Benelux countries for the Spring Classics, Switzerland, France and this week she’s in southern Spain prior to the start of Saturday’s Vuelta A Espana, all with Orica-GreenEdge.
After that she’ll head to Abu Dhabi and after that, she doesn’t even know…but she’ll be going somewhere.
It’s an amazing story and how it all came about was a mixture or right place meets right time and of course, her undying passion for cycling.
“I went to American in my 20’s and I hooked up with a team over there, just while I was on holidays,” she explained.
“They were just amateurs but brought me to races in Califoirnia and places on the east coast; I was sleeping on the floor in hotels during the races, things were that tight!”
Sandra Hodnett worked with Garmin for six seasons while based in Girona. The Irish woman is seen here tending to Dan Martin during the Tour of Poland in 2010, a race the Irishman would go on to win.
At a race in Redlands, CA, in 1998 a team called Mercury approached Hodnett and asked her would she work with them the following year.
On the team were the likes of Floyd Landis, Tom Danielson, Jonathen Vaughters, Baden Cooke and Pavel Tonkov.
Hodnett hummed and hawed but when she returned to Ireland in 1999 she got a job working in a top hotel as the head massage therapist while to supplement her income she worked with Irish teams in races like the Junior Tour of Ireland and the FBD Insurance Rás.
Mercury wanted her but had no promise that they’d keep her on, so she stayed put in Ireland.
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“Mercury took on a guy from the east coast but he blew up after two or three months in the job so they said to me on Paddy’s day, ‘can you come with us from April 1st’.”
It was what she’d always wanted and she didn’t hesitate.
She packed in the job in Cork and was on the first plane to America.
From there she travelled all over the world but would eventually settle in Girona where the then Garmin Transitions squad would make their European base.
Hodnett on duty during her time working for Garmin where she spent six years before being recruited by Orica-GreenEDGE.
“I was six years with Garmin but one of their directors, Matt White, asked me and four others to go with him to Orica-GreenEDGE.
“It was incredible. I had raced from 14 until I was 21 with Cork CC, I was on the Irish national team, I raced in France and Holland but at the end of the day there was no money in it.
“We were sponsored by Sealink but there wasn’t much money there.
“At 21 I had to decide whether to go to France and try to make it as a professional or go and try to make some money and get a job.
“I was going to earn a maximum of €800 a month (as a cyclist), so I stopped the bike and chased the career and I’m still around the job I love.”
With Orica, the atmosphere is what makes the job so much fun, she explains.
“Everyone sees us on social media as the jokers but that’s exactly how we are behind it.
“It’s a great team with a great environment. The ambience on the outside is also what’s going on inside. Everyone gets on so well.
“The job is a little bit tough at the moment because I’m studying osteopathy as well but I love it.”
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