Blythe: Decision to leave WorldTour helped my career

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Adam Blythe (Orica-GreenEdge) feels his decision to move down from WorldTour to Continental level and then back up again has been a good one for his career. The 25-year-old had two years at Omega Pharma-Lotto and two at BMC but then dropped two tiers, joining English outfit NFTO before winning the RideLondon Classic last season.

"I'm definitely happy with the decision," he told Cyclingnews at the Tour of Turkey. "It was nice to just go back and get stuck into racing again and find my feet a little bit. I'm definitely happy with how it went compared to the early years – with BMC I wasn't really doing so good.

"I had more opportunities for myself. RideLondon was the main target for the year so I just made sure I was going well for that. And yeah it was just a case of trying to go into every race I did and try to get a god result out of it, which I think I did."

That RideLondon victory helped earn Blythe a move to Australian team Orica-GreenEdge, a set-up he much prefers to his previous experience of the WorldTour.

"It's a lot different obviously," he says, "but I have done it before so it's something I'm used to. It's nice to be back. It's a good team, dead relaxed, and the guys are really good here. It's a lot different to a Belgian team, and BMC even – BMC is quite Belgian, not really American at all. But yeah I'm enjoying it – it's great."

Blythe's main role has been to work with neo-pros Caleb Ewan and Magnus Cort, who he says are "both young and willing to learn and do good jobs". Ewan has been tipped as one of the sprint stars of the future and has two wins at the Herald Sun Tour and two at the Tour de Langkawi already this year.

Nevertheless, Blythe concedes their partnership it is very much a work in progress and that it has been a challenge to get the youngster used to riding with a proper lead-out train. "We're just trying to find each other," he says. "It's going well but the sprints have been a bit hectic here.

"He's super fast but he needs, it's not that he doesn't have confidence in himself, but he needs to make himself well known so he gets a bit more space in the bunch. Then I think it will be a lot easier for him because now there are a lot of guys trying to push him out the way because he's young.

"My job is to try and protect him and get him the best result as possible."