CCC set sights on Sky's Michal Kwiatkowski

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Poland's Michal Kwiatkowski is top of CCC Team's wish list for 2020, if the rider is forced to look for a new team on the back of the news that Team Sky's headline sponsor will pull out after the 2019 season, according to sport.tvp.pl.

CCC's sports manager, Piotr Wadecki, told Poland's public broadcaster that a world-class Polish team has its sights set on fielding the very best Polish riders, which includes Kwiatkowski.

While 28-year-old Kwiatkowski has a contract with Sky to keep him there until the end of the 2020 season, if Dave Brailsford's team fails to find a new sponsor by July – according to Brailsoford's own deadline – then Kwiatkowski and the others will be free to start looking elsewhere, and CCC would be an obvious destination.

The 2014 road race world champion has been with Team Sky since 2016, and his wins while at the British WorldTour outfit have included Milan-San Remo, Strade Bianche and Tirreno-Adriatico.

"Whether Team Sky continue or not is irrelevant," Wadecki said. "Trying to get Michal on the team has been our priority from the beginning, but we know that he has a two-year contract.

"We would like the CCC team to be Polish not only thanks to the sponsor, but also through having leaders coming from our country," he said, while admitting that the team had not talked to Kwiatkowski about the possibility of him joining.

"You have to remember that this project came together very late in the day, in July. Most of the best cyclists in the world had already signed contracts," Wadecki said of the CCC Team, which is effectively a merger of the BMC Racing Team and Wadecki's CCC Sprandi Polkowice Pro Continental squad, with the new team retaining BMC's WorldTour licence.

"The news [about Sky] doesn't mean that the team will disappear from the cycling world map," he added. "I think the owners of Team Sky have sponsors who can help keep the project going, but I don't know if that will be at as high a level as it has been so far."