Adam Blythe is an ex-professional rider whose decade-long career spanned different eras of bike tech, nutrition, training strategies and race tactics. Blythe was characterised as a rider who constantly adapted and was rewarded with some crowning moments, including winning the British National Road Race title in 2016. He is now a presenter and commentator working for Discovery+/TNT Sports on the channel's coverage of cycling, where he analyses the tactics at the biggest races in the sport. At Rouleur Live 2025 Blythe sat down with Rouleur and spoke candidly about how the sport has changed during and since his time in the peloton.
Rouleur: What do you miss the most about being a professional cyclist?
Adam Blythe: Being fit. It's the easiest answer: being fit, feeling good on a bike and actually being able to repeat efforts and hold on to efforts, rather than doing one and then going, ‘where's the nearest café so I can stop?’
I'm so unfit, but to be honest, I'm not too precious about it. And when I say I miss it, I'm not like ‘shit I need to get fit again’. It's more of a just miss that feeling of riding along at 40kmph with relative ease and just cruising.
R: How long into retirement did it take you for you to feel like you lost that ability?
A: I'd say a month and a half, and then you lose it very, very quickly. It's not the nicest feeling. I retired and didn't run or ride a bike, and then Covid came. Then when I got back on my bike, I was like, ‘Wow, I'm not a bike rider anymore’.
R: Did you find each offseason you had that same feeling?
A: It just depended on your off season, how big you went. And when I say, how big you went, I mean how much time you had off. Some years were easy, some were harder. But definitely, as the years went on, it increasingly got harder and harder, just because the level was going up and up.
I remember in 2010 at my first ever WorldTour camp with Lotto, I turned up and I had done two weeks training before. But I would say 80% of all the bike riders in the team there that was the first day on the bike at that training camp. Things have changed a lot. When I got to my last training camp, everyone would already be getting fit for the training.
It has completely changed. I just think that's just going to keep going that way. There's no off season anymore at all. They’re just on it the whole time.
R: What do you miss the least about being a professional cyclist?
A: The thing I missed the least was pinning numbers on the jersey in a bus. Like in the Giro I was just like ‘hard day coming up’, knowing I'm going to get battered from start to finish. Just sitting there and basically pinning your armour on — I do not miss that. That pin is like accepting you're going to fucking hurt today.
Blythe at Rouleur Live 2025 (Image: Sean Hardy)
R: What was your favourite win in your career?
A: My Ride London (RideLondon-Surrey Classic 2014) win was good. To drop down to a Continental team, and then win Ride London against [Julian] Alaphilippe and [Ben] Swift, that was kind of cool.
What is always an interesting thing when you ask a bike rider about their best win because your best win on paper could be your biggest win, but your performance is completely different. So I'd say my probably best performance was Binche-Tournai-Binche (2012), which might sound ridiculous because I was hungover to shit the day before. I had just had a big bender with the lads, but I managed to jump across to a group of 20 with some big names in there and win. We were laughing about it with the lads because leading up to it we were winding down the season with a lot of wine in the evenings. It was sort of like ‘let’s see what happens’ and then all of a sudden, ‘we've won!’. They are good memories.
R: Did you perform better like that when there was less pressure?
A: Oh no there was pressure, our sports director found out we’d been out and was like: ‘You guys need to perform’. It was a hard race, a lot of rain, not a lot of sleep. But we managed to pull it off.
R: What do you think the pros could benefit from the most?
A: I don't think they do enough on tactics. I just think it's so what's orientated nowadays and aerodynamics is aerodynamics that where I think a lot of people now will really struggle to read a bike race, and I think that's missing from the peloton massively.
I’d say of the pro peloton, 10% know how to race a bike properly. I feel like they're the 10% that win the big races, but they're also the ones that don’t just win with sheer talent, Pogačar-style, just ripping everyone's legs off.
It's really thinking about the race and how to anticipate it, and just simple manoeuvres in a bunch where to save energy, where to save energy and how to be mega efficient.
R: Tell us about your plans to set up the cycling racing academy
A: I'm looking at setting up something where I can try to teach people as best I can to by the side of cycling.
When I was in a team with Philippe Gilbert (at Omega Pharma-Lotto in 2011 and BMC Racing Team in 2012) any race we did together, we would always have a competition about who did the least watts. Phil would always get a better result, obviously, so his would always be higher.
That's what I want to get across to people. It's not about ripping the legs off people at stupid times in a race. What’s massively important: number one: training; number two: finding your way around a peloton. You need to understand when to hide, when not to hide, when to use your legs, when not to use your legs.
So I'm in the process of trying to put together something where I can try and teach that.
R: What was your hardest moment on the bike, in training or racing?
A: My hardest moment on the bike was probably my last year as a pro. My partner at the time was having twins. I'd sort of fallen out of love with riding then. I didn't resent my bike, but I was just trying to ride my bike as hard as possible, which made it impossible for me. Probably the hardest part was trying to juggle that and realising what was more important. It was an easy decision, but looking back on that time it was a lot harder than I realised.
R: If you could play one race differently from your career what would it be?
A: The Worlds in Qatar in 2016. As awful as he sounds, I wish I was more stubborn. Cav is Cav so we'll always do what he says because he was so fucking good, but I could have delivered him to a win if he'd done it my way. It is a ballsy thing to say because it's Cav. Selfishly, I might have got on the podium there, and at the time I didn't have a contract for the following year — I got one after Worlds, but not for a lot of money. I was the only Brit with him to look after him and do what he asked, and a few circumstances didn't go the right way and he got second. He should have won. He knows he should have won, but personally and selfishly, I should have got more out of it.
Blythe behind eventual winner Peter Sagan at the 2016 World Championships Road Race in Qatar (Image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)
R: What's your advice to a young rider starting out now?
A: Have fun. It seems so cliche, saying ‘have fun’, but, man, you’ve got to enjoy it. The older I get, the more I realise you just have to enjoy time. I think you have to try and enjoy every moment.
I think nowadays you can get lost in bike riding so much: the numbers, the training, everything else along with it. Fine, of course you can get lost in it. But just remember why you started: having fun, because you'll never be able to get that time back. Do what you're good at, learn it, teach it. Do what you can with it.
R: As a young rider you spent time in Belgium, what impact did living abroad have on you?
A: I love Belgium. I hated it at the start, but I learned to love it. I lived with Tim Harris, ex national champion in 1989, and he taught me cycling's a business, and that has stuck with me even to now.
Everything about the ‘wolfpack’, the ‘Band of Brothers’, all this shit, it's shit. You come to the end of your contract and they say we're not going to resign you.
Whatever the wolfpack is, it's not for life.
R: If you could make a Classics squad from the men's and women’s peloton past and present, which seven riders would you pick?
A: I would say Van der Poel as number one, then I’ve got Tom Boonen. And then I probably Michele Bartoli, who is just crafty little fucker. Probably Sagan, probably Pog. I’d go Demi Vollering. I’d also want to have Lotte Kopecky, Anna Van der Breggen, Lizzie Deignan.
R: Would you pick a leader from that team?
A: Boonen. Boss.
R: Rank the Monuments
A: Roubaix, Sanremo, Flanders, Liège, Lombardy.
Blythe winning the 2016 British National Road Race (Image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)
R: Who is the most underrated rider?
A: Matteo Trentin is massively underrated. I think he can do a lot of things for his age now, which if he was a young guy he would be getting paid millions. He is worth his weight in gold.
Up until this year, maybe last year, probably Pedersen. I know that sounds like a bit of a shock, but you look at the salaries of a lot of guys for how consistent he is and how good he is compared to the rest. He was, until this year, a rider that was always forgotten about. And then a week before the class seven of London ship, of course, medicine and Pedersen.
R: What is one thing that cycling fans don't know about you?
A: It’s not really interesting fact and it sounds really fucking arrogant, but I was a lot better than anyone else knows. You’d see how shit at testing I was, but I was fucking efficient as a bike ride. I knew a lot about when to use my energy. I didn't have a lot of power, and I didn't train hard enough at all, but I was fucking good. That sounds really arrogant.
R: If you hadn’t been a cyclist, what would you be doing?
A: Probably a PE teacher, something like that. Sport was always important to me from when I was young until now.
R: What's your coffee order?
I know a lot of people don’t like Costa, but I like a cortado from Costa.
