Cycling:Mark Cavendish will ride for Belgian team Omega Pharma-QuickStep next season leaving the British-based Team Sky. The 27-year-old expressed a desire to move on 12 months into a three-year contract, believing Team Sky's stated ambitions and his own no longer matched.
Cavendish, the 2011 world champion who has 23 Tour de France stage wins to his name, had become frustrated serving as a domestique for Bradley Wiggins, the Tour de France winner.
The move was barely a secret but Team Sky spelled it out clearly on Thursday, saying in a statement: "The 2011 world champion had been expected to leave at the end of his first season with the team over a clash of priorities, having seen his winning
opportunities in Grand Tour stages limited."
Wiggins was Team Sky's only priority on the Tour this year as he became the first Briton to win the world's greatest cycling race. The 27-year-old Cavendish, who had benefited from his team mates' help the previous year to win stages, was no more than a domestique in 2012.
Omega Pharma-QuickStep have long been favourites for Cavendish’s signature and a place was made vacant on their roster when Levi Leipheimer was sacked for his role in the Lance Armstrong doping scandal. The Belgian squad and their sporting director Brian Holm, who worked with Cavendish at HTC-Highroad, have the desire and capability to make the Briton their Grand Tour leader and prioritise stage success.