James "Dodzy" Dodds was a friend and inspiration to thousands of mountain bikers. He was a talented rider, racer, skills coach, trail builder, bike designer and all round nice guy. His life was tragically cut short in September 2012.

Dodzy was one of the joint architects of the trail network in Wairoa Gorge and the Dodzy Memorial Enduro celebrates his vision, talent and contribution to New Zealand mountain biking.

Just add water..

One time Dodzy, Dad and I were hunting in Kiakoura. We were fly camping on the tops so access to water was a bit of a hike down a ways to find a creek to full up the bottles. Our camp site we had a bigger 10L container so with that getting low I decided to head down to the creek and full up all the empty bottles. Dodzy was having a nap so I grabbed all the bottles and he had a pump bottle which was half full. Not wanting to take a half filled bottle down with me I emptied it into the 10 L container and headed off down the hill. On my return Dad and Dodzy were ready for and evening hunt so we geared up and went out. I don't remember if we were successful or not but were were certainly hungry when we retire we and decided to boil up some water for our back country meals.  So we boiled the water and poured it into our meals and after 10 minutes we all tucked in. Something was not right! All our meals had a strange taste. I couldn't finish it was terrible! We couldn't work it out until Dodzy searching around the camp couldn't find the half filled bottle of white Rum he had brought. It suddenly just clicked. We had a bloody good laugh. Justin Leov

The Origins of NZ TRAIL SOLUTIONS

It all began in Febuary 2009. I met Dodzy on the side of the trail at Makara Peak. He was teaching a Mountain bike skills class. I asked him if he knew anyone that might be interested in building the finest mountain biking trails all over the world. He said Yea boy, Me! So I gave him my contact information and said get 10 guys together.  I have land in Patagonia, Chile. When can you start?  By May he brought in the guys and the first GLOCON trail was started named 80/20.

During the first cold week at Paloma,  I knew I had found a very special young man that could move mountains. Within the next few months we had Kiwis building in Mexico, Jamaica, Portugal. Soon after that BC, Australia and Wairoa. I am convinced to this day that without Dodzy's passion and drive, none of this would have been possible. Gary C

Coach Dodzy

One of the stories I have from Dodzy is when he was the coach of the NZ Mountain Bike team to race at Oceania's in Threadbo, Australia. Dodzy always put his whole into anything he did - and this was no different when he was the coach of the NZ team.  He went over and above did an amazing job - and this continued through to the after party (photo of coach Dodzy) where the Mountain Bike Skills Clinic visa made many appearances. Needless to say, the bus trip to the airport the next morning wasn't pleasant as evidenced by the many unplanned bus stops (photo of one attached) for...people to get some fresh air and be sick (heres looking at you KB, if I remember correctly haha).