Blythe beats Cavendish to British national championship victory

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Adam Blythe (Tinkoff) denied Mark Cavendish a second British national road race title as he outsprinted the Manxman at the end of an aggressive day in the north east of England.

Cavendish, who will try to claim the yellow jersey on the opening day of the Tour de France next week, was the favourite as a 14-rider group that came towards the line for a sprint and it was he who opened it up. However, Blythe, who had been part of a long four-man breakaway before limiting his workload on the final laps once caught by Cavendish's chase group, took his wheel before brushing shoulders and coming past him on the slightly-uphill drag to the line.

The 26-year-old Tinkoff rider punched the air and celebrated wildly as he crossed the line for what is probably the biggest result of his career. Andy Fenn, whose Sky teammate Alex Peters had attacked repeatedly to shake up the closing stages of the race, was a more distant third.

"I wanted that one, I was thinking about it all day, trying to be in the right moves," said Blythe, who won’t be at the Tour de France but is instead set to debut his white, red and blue champion’s jersey on home soil at the RideLondon-Surrey Classic later this summer.

"With a couple of laps to go I thought we might hold off the chasers, it was hanging around 20 seconds and I did a few hard turns, but it came back together and I just gambled it’d be a sprint and luckily I got round Cav."

The 207km course was based on two circuits – a main 13.4km loop to be covered 12 times before a 6.7km finishing loop in Stockton to be covered six times – and it produced the aggressive and chaotic racing that has come to characterise national championships.

Indeed, Blythe described how hard it was, the WorldTour-level rider saying it was the toughest day his power meter has seen this year.

"Normally when Cav wins there are leadout trains, but today was a hard day," he said. "We were marked out all day, we weren’t really given any room, always on the pedals all day, I’ve had one of the highest powers I’ve had all year."

Five-time national time trial champion Alex Dowsett was aggressive early on, sparking various moves in a fluid opening portion of the race. However, the Movistar man didn’t make the key selections that were soon made, with two groups joining up to make a breakaway of 16, including Blythe.

It was fast and furious in the bunch as Dowsett and others looked to bridge over, and a large group of 28 ended up clipping off in pursuit of the leaders. That group itself split, and in the end eight riders, including Cavenidsh, Dowsett, and Tao Geoghegan Hart, made the junction to form a lead group of 22.

On the final lap of the main loop, Team Sky neo-pro Alex Peters showed his aggression and formed a four-man group with Geoghegan Hart, Tom Moses, and Blythe that would go close to contesting the victory. The quartet collaborated well and held onto around 30 seconds for four of the six final laps before an aggressive Cavendish helped drag the chase group – which by that stage had been whittled down to 10 – back into contention.

With 14 now at the head of the race with under two laps to go, Peters attacked repeatedly, with Chris Lawless the most active in shutting down the moves. It was frantic, with splits opening and closing all the time, but by this stage Blythe had set up shop on the back of the group – as he said, gambling on it coming together for a sprint.

After relative calm on the final lap, that’s what happened and once Cavendish had opened it up to come past Lawless and Thwaites, Blythe found he had enough in the tank to take the spoils.

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