Welsh racer Luke Rowe has made the surprising decision to leave Ineos Grenadiers after retirement and sign with French decathlon AG2R La Mondiale as a directeur sportif.

Lowe spent his 13-year professional career in the Ineos/Sky setup, where the team enjoyed countless successes between 2012 and 2024 and he himself won two races.

In May, Lowe announced that he would retire at the end of the 2024 campaign.

However, the 34-year-old chose a different path, signing with Decathlon AG2R on November 1. He told GCN why he decided to make the move.

“One of my main concerns about staying at Ineos was that I wanted to make a change. If I'm here now, I want to get better, and whatever department I'm in, I want to improve,” Lowe said. Honestly, the biggest reason I was afraid was that if I wanted to make a change, I would have to go through too many people and eventually the change would not happen.” [I didn't want to waste my time, and that was my biggest fear. Not financially or negatively towards the individual or the team as a whole. I was just afraid of getting lost in a big organization. But now it's more than a cycling team, it's part of a global business, and it's owned by Ineos, not by sponsors.”

Lowe compared the current status and team structure of Ineos, which owns and sponsors a number of major teams across several different sports, to the Team Sky days when Dave Brailsford was solely in charge of the cycling team.

“At the top of Team Sky was always Dave Brailsford. It was always Dave Brailsford at the top of Team Sky. But now there are levels above and beyond.” [Indeed, the right people can make decisions that can change things overnight. If something major needs to be changed, it goes to the top dog and is done with the click of a finger. But in my case, it would have to go all the way down the pecking order and up through the chain of command.”

Rowe said that he never thought he would leave the team when he was first contemplating retirement. He said that after his initial conversation with Ineos, he began discussing contracts and roles with other teams, noting that “change is sometimes a good thing.”

“I really didn't think I would leave the team. But when that crash happened in March, it was clear that it was the end of my career. I took a step back and thought, 'What am I going to do?'”

”The first person I talked to was Ineos. Then I started talking to other teams. I feel that sometimes change is good.”