On an evening during the BinckBank Tour, Marcel Kittel sat down opposite Patrick Lefevere and delivered the news that he would be leaving Quick-Step Floors for Katusha-Alpecin.
Lefevere saw that the German’s mind had been made up, and accepted his decision. Kittel would leave after two years of success and start afresh.
Speculation of Kittel's departure from Quick-Step to Katusha first surfaced after the Giro d'Italia in May when Fernando Gaviria claimed four stage wins for Quick-Step on his Grand Tour debut. The Colombian's success may have enhanced his own stature within Lefevere's squad but it would also become one of many factors that led to Kittel's transfer.
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"It wasn't about the Giro. No that's really not true. The most important thing for me was to concentrate on myself," Kittel tells Cyclingnews.
"I wanted to go my own way and race as well as possible. In the last two years, of course, Fernando has shown his talent and it's pretty clear where he wants to go. For me, there are no hard feelings about those ambitions because they were the same when I was his age."
So what were the other elements that led to Kittel's move? In May, Lefevere was still without the necessary funding to guarantee his riders contracts beyond 2017. The experienced team boss has always managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat when it comes to securing sponsorship but speculation that he himself was looking at retirement didn't help the situation.
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