'I never thought I'd really leave the team': Luke Rowe opens up on his reasons for departing Ineos Grenadiers

Luke Rowe has said that he never thought he would leave Ineos Grenadiers, as he opened up for the first time about his looming move to Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale.

The Welshman spent his entire pro career at Team Sky, which became Ineos Grenadiers, after he joined in 2012, but will move to French squad Decathlon as a sports director as he hangs up his wheels.

Speaking to GCN for a video titled "Is This The End of Team Ineos?", the 34-year-old revealed it was wanting to be free of bureaucracy beyond anything else which caused him to look elsewhere for the future.

"I never thought I'd really leave the team," he explained in his GCN interview, published on Saturday. "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."

Last month, Rowe said Ineos was "underperforming", and may need a number of years to regain its previous dominance in a candid interview, saying that the team had found itself "on the back foot".

"One of my big concerns with staying at Ineos was that I want to make a change," he continued in his latest interview. "If it's here now then I want it to become better. Whatever department I was in, you want to improve. 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. I was scared that I'd get lost in a big organisation. 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."

Last week, Ineos announced a raft of changes to their performance staff, including new sports directors and a lead performance coach among other new roles.

"At Team Sky there was always Dave B [Brailsford] at the top," Rowe said. "You might have run things by a few people but the buck stopped with him. 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. For me, I'd be a long way down the pecking order and it'd have to go up through the chain of command."

Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale won 30 races this season, its most since 1999, while Ineos Grenadiers have won just 14 times, its lowest ever.