Tom Pidcock has officially parted company with Ineos Grenadiers after the two parties reached an agreement to terminate his contract by mutual consent. The Yorkshireman, whose future had been the subject of speculation going back months, is widely expected to sign for Q36.5, the second-tier Swiss ProTeam.

The departure of one of cycling’s brightest talents will doubtless be offered up as further proof of the decline and fall of the once-dominant British super-team. Ineos Grenadiers, formerly Team Sky, won just 14 races in 2024, the lowest total in the team’s history, and were winless at this year’s Tour de France, by far their most important race of the season.

But Pidcock’s exit probably made sense in the end.

The 25-year-old’s five-year contract, which ran until the end of 2027 season, was worth between €3-5 million (£2.5-4.1 million), making him the highest-paid rider in the team, and within the top five in the entire peloton. At the same time, his extraordinary versatility and apparent desire to carry on competing across a broad range of disciplines made him a difficult fit for a team whose backer Sir Jim Ratcliffe wants above all to win the Tour de France again.

Rod Ellingworth, Ineos Grenadiers’ former deputy team principal, suggested to Telegraph Sport a couple of years ago that Pidcock would continue to try his hand at a broad range of disciplines until Paris 2024 – where Pidcock won his second consecutive Olympic mountain bike gold this summer with one of the performances of the Games – but thereafter would knuckle down and see what he could achieve in general classification terms.

Perhaps Pidcock no longer wanted to do that. Or felt he was being pulled in a direction he did not want to go in by Ineos. By all accounts, that is what he fell out with Ineos’ former sporting director Steve Cummings over. Cummings, who has since left the team, was dropped from Ineos’s Tour line-up on the eve of this year’s race, shortly after the latest series of Netflix’s Unchained documentary gave a glimpse into his strained relationship with the team’s star rider. Cummings reportedly told Pidcock off camera that he was never going to be a Tour de France winner as long as he did not dedicate his life to the road. Their relationship never recovered.

Certainly the team, in their press release on Wednesday and in off-the-record briefings, stressed the fact that Pidcock wished to continue to compete across a variety of disciplines.

“Tom’s versatility on the road and off road is extraordinary, and he’s right to want to pursue that to the fullest,” John Allert, Ineos’ chief executive, told Telegraph Sport. “We’re a GC-focused team – always have been and always will be. That’s our priority. It doesn’t mean either of us is right or wrong – we’re just different.

“Tom’s been a popular and much-admired member of the team, but nothing is for ever, and not all relationships endure – in sport as in life. There is no falling out, no animosity. He leaves with our appreciation and genuine respect for what we’ve achieved together over four years.”

Il Lombardia snub the final nail in the coffin

The claim that there was no falling out or animosity sounds far-fetched, given the bad blood which had built up over the past 15 months.

After last summer’s disastrous Tour, where there was to be no repeat of Pidcock’s thrilling Alpe d’Huez win of 2022, and which Pidcock eventually abandoned with Covid, the final nail in the coffin came at Il Lombardia, the final monument of the season. Pidcock arrived in blistering form off the back of his runner-up place behind Tadej Pogacar in the previous week’s Giro dell’Emilia warm-up race, only for the Yorkshireman to drop the proverbial hand grenade on his social media channels when he announced on the eve of the race that he had been “de-selected”.

Pidcock nearly signed for Q36.5 the following month, only for that to fall through. Now it appears he has his wish.

In his and the team’s defence, it does sound as if they managed to reach an amicable parting of the ways in the end, with Pidcock writing a generous message on his Instagram account on Wednesday night. “So many great memories that will stick with me for a lifetime,” he wrote. “I can’t thank enough all the hard-working people in the team who brought so much and helped me achieve my dreams – thank you Ineos Grenadiers. Gonna miss you boys. When one door closes another one opens...”

Whether it leaves Ineos Grenadiers or Pidcock any better off remains to be seen. Pidcock’s exit could offer the team the chance to coalesce around young Spaniard Carlos Rodriguez, or sign another young starlet. Alternatively it could be another step in their downfall, with Ineos owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe likely to be getting twitchy by now, especially given the huge sums he is ploughing into Manchester United.

The British super-team have been in a state of almost constant flux since Ratcliffe’s arrival in 2019. The departures of the team’s co-founders Dave Brailsford, Ellingworth and Fran Millar on the management side clearly had a huge impact.

Scott Drawer, who has returned as performance director, having most recently been director of sport at elite British private school Millfield, has struggled to stem the steady flow of riders. Since 2022, the team have lost Adam Yates, Pavel Sivakov, Jhonatan Narvaez, Richard Carapaz, Dylan van Baarle, Ben Tullett, Tao Geoghegan Hart, Dani Martinez and Ethan Hayter.

That is on top of key research and development players such as Dan Bigham, who left this summer with stinging criticism of the new set-up. “I feel that a lot of performance we’re leaving on the table and that frustrates me because it’s clear as day we should be doing things a lot better,” he told Telegraph Sport. “Let’s be honest, Ineos are not where they want to be, not where they need to be and the gap is not small.”