Not lunch with Adam Blythe
This episode is a twist on The Cycling Podcast's occasional Lunch With... series.
Richard Moore and Lionel Birnie met up with Adam Blythe during the London Six-Day at the Olympic velodrome and although they did have lunch the podcast was recorded once all the plates had been cleared away.
The former British national champion is still only 29 but has packed a lot into his nine-year pro career. He'd baulk at being described as a product of the British Cycling academy because he left fairly shortly after joining and headed to Belgium to try to make his way as a pro.
He learned how to make a living from racing while living with another former British champion, Tim Harris, and his partner Joscelin Ryan and got his first taste of life in the professional ranks with the Silence-Lotto squad.
Since then he's raced for some of the biggest teams in the world – BMC Racing, Orica-GreenEdge and Tinkoff – but has also dropped out of the World Tour twice.
He can count Philippe Gilbert, Peter Sagan and Alberto Contador as former team-mates.
Most recently he has ridden for the Irish Aqua Blue Sport team that folded suddenly mid-season, but he will return to Lotto-Soudal, where he started his career, in 2019.
In this candid conversation, Blythe talks about to survive as a pro.
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Our final Friends of the Podcast episode for 2018 will be out very soon. It's on the subject of how to survive retirement and features Fabian Cancellara, Juan Antonio Flecha and many more. The idea was proposed by Friend of the Podcast Stephen Harris, who guest edited the episode.
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