Welshman to remain on team until end of 2021 season
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Luke Rowe (Team Sky) on the attack(Image credit: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images Sport)
Chris Froome and Luke Rowe at the start(Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Geraint Thomas wearing the overall leader's yellow jersey and teammate Luke Rowe hold the Welsh flag as they ride during the 21st and last stage of the 105th edition of the Tour de France (Image credit: Getty Images)
Luke Rowe leaves the team bus(Image credit: Getty Images)
Luke Rowe (Team Sky) rides the cobbles at Tour of Flanders(Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Luke Rowe has agreed a contract extension that will keep him at Team Sky for the next three seasons. The Welshman’s new deal will expire at the end of the 2021 campaign.
Rowe has spent the entirety of his professional career with Team Sky since he stepped up to WorldTour level in 2012. He has established himself as one of the squad’s leaders in the cobbled Classics and has been on the Tour de France team in each of the past four years.
"I’ve been with Sky since the start of my career and I really feel a part of the furniture here," Rowe said in a statement released by the team.
"It’s been seven years and this deal will take me through to 10 years with Team Sky, so it was an easy decision. This is home."
The 28-year-old proceeded to line out in the cobbled Classics and was later part of the Sky team that helped his fellow Welshman Geraint Thomas to overall victory at the Tour de France. Rowe brought the curtain down on his season in August after sustaining a fractured scaphoid at the European Championships in Glasgow.
"The team backed me straight away after my injury, whereas some teams would have turned their back. They helped me tackle the injury head on and looked after me every step of the way," Rowe said.
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"If I’d have been out of contract one year earlier I’d have been in a mess. I had a year to prove myself again and come back - to show that it hadn’t affected me and that I could reach the level I was at before."
Rowe’s potential in the cobbled Classics has long been flagged – he placed 8th at Paris-Roubaix in 2015 and 6th at the Tour of Flanders a year later – but he also played a striking role as a climbing domestique at this year’s Tour.
"I’ll continue to keep knocking on the door at the Classics and see what I can do there, and after that it will hopefully be the Tour, or any of the Grand Tours," Rowe said of his 2019 race schedule. "I really don’t mind."
