It’s a rare scenario when a professional rider tears up his contract and moves to another team, but in early August that’s exactly what Warren Barguil did: he essentially annulled his deal with Team Sunweb in order to join Fortuneo-Oscaro on a three-year contract.
What made the situation relatively unusual was the fact that Barguil still had a year left on his deal with the German team, and that after a hugely successful Tour de France his reputation and standing had become vastly enhanced. Yet, Tour success, rider ambition, and team dynamics only accelerated a switch. Cyclingnews takes a look at the mechanics of how Barguil swapped Sunweb’s black and white stripes for the Breton Fortuneo-Oscaro squad.
While speculation over Barguil’s future first surfaced during the Tour, the reality was that the Frenchman had been on the lookout for a new team since late spring. Even before the Tour de France reached Paris, the move was secured with Sunweb already making plans to reinvest the rider’s near €500,000 annual salary in other areas of the squad.
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In early June, just a few weeks after Tom Dumoulin had won the Giro d’Italia, Barguil approached the Sunweb management and asked if they would consider letting him leave. The initial request caught the directors off-guard as the Frenchman had one year left on his contract and his season until that point had been consistent rather than spectacular.
“He came forward and asked, as step one, if there was an option to leave the team. He asked if it was okay if he could look around. We told him that we’d think about it and then we got back to him and said he was free to look,” Sunweb’s CEO, Iwan Spekenbrink, tells Cyclingnews.
“The discussion came down to whether we were willing to let him go. Once we agreed he could look around, then we decided we wouldn’t influence where he would go.”
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