Leo Hayter has been dismissed from the DSM development team and has agreed to join Hagens Berman Aktion in 2022.

The 21-year-old British rider, winner of last year's U23 edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, had signed a contract with DSM for this season, but the Dutch team said Hayter wanted to move to the World Tour before 2023, which the team rejected the offer.

The U23 team, led by Axel Merckx, got a free spot after American rider Samuel Janisch decided not to continue his racing career beyond 2021. Although Hayter's contract with Axeon has not yet been signed, a deal has been agreed upon and is expected to be finalized on Monday evening.

"One of our guys decided he wanted to go back to school. He did not want to pursue cycling and I fully respect that. Merckx told Cycling News. [I told him that if he ever became a free agent, I would hire him right away. Until then, it was up to his agent and DSM to decide if he was a free agent or not. It's a great trade and we're really excited to have him on our team."

According to DSM, Ryder wanted a contract with the World Tour, but the team did not want to sign him until 2023.

"We were not going to offer Leo a World Tour contract before 2023, so we gave him the freedom to look elsewhere."

"As a result, we gave up on having Leo participate in the 2022 Development Program so we could recruit new young talent to the program"

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Hayter, who won Liège-Bastogne-Liège, also won a stage and finished 12th overall in the Tour de Bretagne-Cycliste. He also won the U23 British national time trial championships in August. His brother Ethan is a member of the Ineos Grenadiers.

DMS has an unparalleled history of releasing players mid-contract. Just last month, Tiesj Benoot was released from his contract and allowed to move to Jumbo Visma. Also a year ago, Marc Hirsch broke his contract and was allowed to move to UAE team Emirates.

Marcel Kittel kicked off the trend in 2016 with a move to Etixx Quickstep, while Warren Barguil moved to Fortuneo Oskalo (now Alcare Samsic) in 2018.

Edward Theuns returned after a brief stint at Trek Segafredo, and Tom Dumoulin broke his contract two years early to sign with Jumbo Visma. Michael Matthews left the team with still one year left on his contract to rejoin Team Bike Exchange at the end of 2020.