'It wasn't financial' – Luke Rowe reveals reason for surprise move away from Ineos Grenadiers

After his retirement, Welsh racer Luke Rowe made a surprising decision to leave the Ineos Grenadiers and sign with the French squad Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale as a directeur sportif.

Rowe spent his entire 13-year professional career within the Ineos/Sky setup, helping the team capture countless successes between 2012 and 2024 as well as taking two victories of his own.

In May, Rowe announced that he'd be hanging up his wheels at the conclusion of the 2024 campaign, with many assuming that he'd slot into a staff role on the British squad for 2025 and beyond.

However, the 34-year-old has chosen a different path and will sign up with Decathlon AG2R from November 1. Speaking to GCN, he outlined the rationale behind his decision to make the change.

"One of my big concerns with staying at Ineos was that I want to make a change – if it's here now then I want it to become better, whatever department I was in, you want to improve," Rowe said. "Honestly, the biggest reason I was scared was if I wanted to make a change then it has to go through too many people and the change doesn't end up happening.

"I just didn't want my time wasted and that was my biggest fear. It wasn't financial, it wasn't any negativity towards an individual or the team as a whole; I've got a lot of time for them. But I was scared that I'd get lost in a big organisation. But it's also more than a cycling team now – it's part of a global business and it's owned by Ineos, not sponsored by them."

Rowe compared the current situation and team structure at Ineos – which owns and sponsors numerous major teams across several different sports – to the Team Sky days when Dave Brailsford took sole charge of the cycling team.

"At Team Sky there was always Dave Brailsford at the top. You might have run things by a few people but the buck stopped with him," Rowe said. "But now, there's more levels above and above.

"Certainly, the right people can make decisions where things could change overnight – if something big needs to be changed then it goes to the top dog and with a click of the fingers it's done. But for me, I'd be a long way down the pecking order and it'd have to go up through the chain of command."

Rowe did say that he didn't expect to be leaving the team when he was initially thinking about his retirement. He said that he started to discuss deals and roles with other teams after first speaking to Ineos, noting that "change is good sometimes".

"I never thought I'd really leave the team. I thought that's where I would spend most of my post-cycling career, that that was the natural thing to do, and then when that crash did happen in March it was clear that was the end of my career. You take a step back and you go 'What am I going to do?'

"The first team I spoke to was Ineos and they kind of laid it out. 'Right OK, thank you very much' and then I started speaking to other teams. I just feel like change is good sometimes."