After leaving Dimension Data, where he was manager, Brian Smith says the decision was mutual and he believes team owner Doug Ryder will take over from the Scot as GM.

“It was a mutual break but I think that Douglas will step in and run the team,” he told Cyclingnews twenty-four hours after the news was released to the media.

Smith indicated he wanted to leave as he wasn’t getting to append enough time with the riders and was spending most of his time dealing with administration work.

“I came on as interim and then became general manager last year. I think that I did well when I was at the coalface and dealing with the riders but I was doing a lot more admin and logistics this year and that’s probably not where I wanted to be. It’s mutual though and I’ve got a lot of friends in the team. You have to remember that I hired a lot of the staff and riders. It’s hard to step away,” Smith said.

“The boxes have been ticked and with being in the WorldTour my job changed a little bit and it took some time away from other things. It came to the point where we’ve separated but I’ll continue to help the team where I can as I have a lot of friends there. The last thing I’ll do is cause any problems.”

Smith says there is no bad blood between himself and Ryder and says the two will remain close friends. 

“We talked about it as friends and decided that this was it. He’ll still be a friend even though it’s hard to walk away. I’ve sent them all a message wishing them the best, but now it’s onwards, maybe upwards. The first thing I’m going to do is spend time with my family.”

“Doug has just decided that he wants to run the team but that was always in the background anyway. The only reason he didn’t do it earlier was because he was spending time with his family and he was looking for sponsors. Now he’s done that. The next natural choice for him was to run the team. I was happy with that because a lot of the stuff I was doing this year was totally different. I was doing a totally different job last year. I’m not leaving in bad terms though. Rolf has called and Cavendish, Edvald have all messaged me.”