Jason Osbourne, the Olympic rowing medalist who is now a two-time cycling Esports world champion has said he turned his back on racing on the road with Alpecin-Deceuninck because he felt too confined and controlled within the team's structure.
The German landed a contract with Deceuninck-QuickStep team in 2021, after winning his first Esports world title, and was already aged 27 years when he took up his place on August 1st that year.
Having completed the last part of the 2021 road campaign with the Belgian team, he then rode for Alpecin-Deceuninck Development Team in 2022 and stepped up to the World Tour squad for last year and this season, though stepped away in mid September.
He won the UCI Esports World Championships again last weekend, just weeks after quitting road racing, and has now said he was unhappy at the level of control Alpecin-Deceuninck had over him, among other issues.
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At the time he said the support from Alpecin-Deceuninck had been impressive, but he had suffered from a hip problem, which had hampered his performances from race to race.
However, even when his injury improved, he felt he had lost his love for road racing and now wanted to focus on e-racing and gravel.
Speaking on the Virtual Velo Podcast, he has now expanded on his reasons for turning his back on a road career, even though he was 2nd overall at Tour of Austria (2.1) last year, finished the Vuelta in 2023 and rode both Paris Nice (2.UWT) and Critérium du Dauphiné (2.UWT) this year.
Osbourne said he felt the control that a cycling team wanted to exert over a rider was too much, making it very hard to schedule his plans, including downtime, which was canceled at no notice when the team needed a rider for a race.
He also said the dynamic of rowing - where each member of a winning team became world champion, for example - was missing in cycling.
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He was a world champion and European champion in rowing and also claimed silver in at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 in the lightweight double sculls.
And though he felt he could earn a living from e-racing and gravel, it would not be as much as a World Tour rider would be paid.
"But it's still also at a point where I say it's not worth it," he said of road racing. "Like, it's not worth the risk of crashing. And also what I didn't like was when… You get a call 'can you please do this race now?' And you'd just planned a weekend with your girlfriend somewhere, a weekend trip or whatever. And then came a call 'we need you here'.
"Everything was not plannable. You had to sometimes jump whenever they wanted you to. And it was always… it felt a bit like, I wouldn't say slavery, but you were just a bit too much in (the team's) control. And I just wanted to get rid of that part.
"But, looking back to when I made the decision to quit, I think I made it quite clear that it wasn't necessarily the hip that made me come to this decision.
"I just noticed over the weeks months with the racing that it's just not really my passion anymore. I didn't really enjoy the racing as much. And looking back, I think mainly because I come from the sport of rowing which is also a team sport.
"But the difference there is if you compete in the world championships and you're in and eight, say, and then there's nine people in the boat all nine of them is world champion. And, it's a team sport, yes, but it's also like an individual sport because everyone gets rewarded with a win in the end.
"And that was also what was missing for me (in cycling) because I always like to work on myself and get the most out of myself. And I had that in rowing and I didn't really transition into cycling.
"I had some good races and I had some success here and there. But in the end I just didn't find the joy in it. I enjoyed my time before I got to Alpecin way more. Like as a privateer, just doing the rowing but then also doing the cycling esports or whatever event I wanted to do."
