Unlike the madness of football's transfer window, it's rare in professional cycling for riders to break their contracts and switch teams. Yet Quick-Step Floors manager Patrick Lefevere has now picked up two riders in three years thanks to early exits from their teams.
The first was Marcel Kittel, who joined the Belgian team in 2016 after a disastrous 2015 season with Giant-Alpecin, and the German is central to the puzzle that now sees Elia Viviani jump ship and join Quick-Step Floors with a year left on his Team Sky contract.
Rumours of Kittel's departure from the Belgian team had surfaced even before he won five stages at the Tour de France, and Katusha-Alpecin, with two German sponsors in Alpecin and Canyon and an unhappy Alexander Kristoff, was the name on most people's lips.
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The move was confirmed in early August and even Kittel acknowledged that one factor was the rise of Fernando Gaviria at Quick-Step Floors, the Colombian prodigy who won four stages at this year's Giro d'Italia in his first Grand Tour and who is being lined up for a Tour de France debut in 2018.
Unable to guarantee Kittel sprint leadership at the Tour, and unable to continue paying him the same modest sum that made him such a bargain in the first place, Lefevere knew he faced losing the 29-year-old, and was informed in person in early August.
The door was open for a secondary sprinter at Quick-Step Floors, who could alternate with Gaviria.
- Marcel Kittel to Katusha-Alpecin
- Alberto Contador into retirement
- Warren Barguil to Fortuneo-Oscaro
- Ian Boswell to Katusha-Alpecin
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