Brian Holm has spoken to VeloNews about the sprint changes at Etixx-QuickStep this offseason, with Mark Cavendish leaving the team and Marcel Kittel a somewhat surprising addition. But the deal has gone well so far, with Cavendish winning just twice to Kittel’s five so far.

“It was all quite fast. The first time I heard about it was when Cavendish told me. Cav was already going, but I was staying on the team, and he told me, ‘Kittel is coming.’ I thought he was kidding. I called Patrick Lefevere and he didn’t want to talk about it too much. I saw Kittel and he said, ‘wait two days.’ I think everything happened very, very fast. There are a lot of rumors in cycling, and normally you hear everything, but this time it was really going fast. No one knew anything. I still need to sit down and have a good glass of wine with Lefevere to get the full story on that one,” Holm told VeloNews of how he heard the news that Giant-Alpecin had released Kittel and he was choosing to move to Etixx-QuickStep.

Holm says losing Cavendish and Mark Renshaw to Dimension Data is a loss, but he hopes he has plenty of riders who can lead out Kittel in the biggest races this season.

“Renshaw is a big loss. He is the master of the leadout, and no one is better than he is, but we have some guys. We have a few guys. [Nikolas] Maes, [Fabio] Sabatini, [Lukasz] Wisniowski, [Maximiliano] Richeze, [Gianni] Meersman, so I think we will solve that problem. Even Tony Martin, he is going from the last 1km. Marcel and Tony are from the same city, so I know Tony will be happy to help as well.”

The Danish DS also weighed in on the debate on how many sprint stages should be included in races, saying he cant understand why organisers don’t include plenty of stages for fast men.

“I think everyone likes the sprints, and I can’t really see the point of making it harder and harder every year. Maybe it’s for the TV. I think last year’s Tour de France was the hardest I’ve ever seen. It was just crazy. These days, there’s not even a flat section in the road where you can take it a little bit easy and rest the head. It’s full-gas start to finish. Even when it’s a sprint stage, it’s like a rollercoaster, up and down in the last 10km, roundabouts, and then you have the GC guys fighting to be up there, who are afraid to lose five seconds. Every year it’s just more and more crazy. For that reason, I cannot figure out what they’re trying to do.”