Dominique Mayho heads to Jersey this evening for the next stop in his bid to become a professional cyclist.

Mayho will represent Bermuda at the NatWest Island Games next week, and is excited to be racing for his country once more.

The Island’s top cyclist has spent most of the year competing abroad as part of the Ride with Rendall Elite squad, where he raced against some of the best young riders in North America and Europe.

For now, however, he is fully focused on representing Bermuda, an opportunity he said he was grateful to have.

“I am excited to be racing for Bermuda again, it’s always a good feeling to be representing the Island. I’m looking forward to it,” Mayho said.

Mayho is part of an eight-strong Bermuda cycling contingent that will compete in a variety of events, and while Mayho is not sure how he will fare in the time trial, he is targeting a top ten finish in the road race part of the Criterium.

“I am not sure about the time trial because I haven’t really ridden the time trial all year, so I don’t know how that is going to go.”

Competing alongside Mayho in the men’s team will be Darren Glasford, Deshi Smith and Che’quan Richardson, while Karen Bordage, who won silver at the 2013 Games in Bermuda, will be joined by Zoenique Williams, Gabriella Arnold and Sarah Bonnett in the women’s events.

Much of Mayho’s work over the past several months has centred around long distance racing, and at the RWR training camp in California he was routinely riding more than 100 miles a day.

That work seemed to pay off, with some strong showings in France and Belgium, including a sixth-place finish in an Under-23 race in France.

The racing in Belgium was at a higher level than Mayho had experienced in the past and he said that many times he was just aiming to finish.

“Training was good in Belgium, but I was mainly racing two and three times a week and recovering in between,” he said. “I wasn’t training much, but the racing was getting me fitter.

“My best result was sixth in the Under-23 race in France and other than that my goal in Belgium, because the races out there are at such a high level, I was just aiming to finish.

“There were a couple where I did well, I finished twentieth in one.”

Evidence of Mayho’s improved fitness levels were on display in his whopping three minute win over Shannon Lawrence in last weekend’s RMS Construction Road Race Championships. The pair also finished one-two in 2013, when Mayho’s winning time was only three-hundredths of a second.

The Island Games will be the start of a busy period for Mayho who is also competing in the Pan Am Games in Toronto. The Bermuda cyclist will fly to Canada to join up with his RWR team-mates, and hopes his hard work eventually pays off.

“You have to stay dedicated,” Mayho said. “Nothing comes easy, you have to work for it and stick it out.”