Bjarne Riis

Template:Road bicycle racer infobox Bjarne Lykkegård Riis (born April 3, 1964), nicknamed the Eagle from Herning (Danish: Ørnen fra Herning), is a Danish former professional road bicycle racer who won the 1996 Tour de France, and is now the team owner and manager of Danish UCI ProTour outfit Team CSC. Other career highlights include winning the Amstel Gold Race in 1997, multiple Danish National Championships, and stage wins in the Giro d'Italia. Riis' crowning achievement as a cyclist was unseating Miguel Induráin's five-year stranglehold on the Tour de France by winning it in 1996.

Born in Herning, Riis began cycling at local club Herning CK. He started his professional career in 1986, but his career ended prematurely due to a crash on June 18, 1999 while cycling to the starting line of a stage in the Tour de Suisse. He never fully recovered and officially retired in 2000.

Career

Bjarne Riis started his professional career in 1986 and he made his first result with a fifth place finish in the GP Wallonie that year. Following a few years with no personal wins, he had yet to impress when his contract ran out in 1988. At the 1988 Tour of European Community race, while riding for the Toshiba team, Riis and fellow Danish rider Kim Eriksen were contacted by the former Tour de France winner Laurent Fignon from the Systeme U team. Fignon was leading the Tour of European Community race, but he needed a few riders to help him secure the victory. In the hope of earning a contract with Systeme U, Riis helped Fignon achieve the victory and in December 1988 he moved to sports director Cyrille Guimard's Systeme U team as a support rider for Fignon. For the next three years Riis rode as Fignon's eternal helper in both flat and mountainous terrain, and they became close friends. Riis helped Fignon win the 1989 Giro d'Italia, while Riis himself won his first professional victory as he secured the 9th stage of the Giro.

When Fignon retired in 1992, Bjarne Riis contacted fellow Danish rider Rolf Sørensen, who got him a job as a rider for Italian team Ariostea under sporting director Giancarlo Ferretti. Bjarne Riis was first known to the Danish public, when he won the stage to Châlon-sur-Marne during the 1993 Tour de France. He also conquered the polka-dotted mountain jersey, though only for a day. He finished the 1993 Tour at the overall 5th place, which at that time was the best Danish result, surpassing Leif Mortensen's former record, a 6th place. In 1994, Bjarne Riis was sick during the Tour. He lost much time on the mountain stages, but managed to win a stage win later on, by going on a break-away and ending up racing solo for the last 30 km of the stage. With the sprinter teams chasing him, he only just clinched the win by a few seconds. In 1995, Bjarne Riis was the first Dane to reach the podium in Paris. He finished 3rd after five-times winner Miguel Indurain.

For the 1996 season, Riis switched to the Telekom team. Here he experienced the greatest triumph of his career, as he won the 1996 Tour de France, the greatest single achievement in Danish cycling. The week before the Tour de France, he had won the Danish Road Racing Championship, enabling him to win the Tour in the national tricot. The win was instrumental in turning then Telekom (now T-Mobile Team) from a small team (which had struggled to get an invitation to the Tour in 1995 and only managed to send half a team) into one of the biggest teams in road racing. It also had a huge positive effect on the development of cycling in Denmark - both in terms of participation and in spectator interest.

In 1997, he won the spring classic Amstel Gold Race, with a great effort, riding solo from a long way out, in pouring rain. Bjarne Riis was the favourite at the 1997 Tour de France, but instead it was his young German teammate Jan Ullrich, who won the overall competition, with Bjarne Riis finishing 7th. On his way to the startup at stage 2 of the 1999 Tour de Suisse, Bjarne Riis hit the curb and crashed. The sustained injuries to his elbow and knee ultimately forced him to retire at the age of 36, in the spring of 2000.

Reputation as a rider

In the aftermath of the performance enhancing drugs crisis in cycling following the 1998 Tour de France, Riis acquired the nickname of Mr. 60%, a suggestion that he has used doping. Although it is usually stated that this was Riis' nickname in the peloton, there is no evidence to support such a claim, and it has been flatly denied by Danish former rider Brian Holm. The 60% is an allusion to a high hematocrit (red blood cell) level, an indication of EPO usage. It has been published that Riis had a hematocrit level of 56% during one test in July 1995; Well above typical natural levels, as well as his published reading of 41% in the offseason earlier that year. The earliest mention of the nickname can be traced to interviews with riders of Festina in 1998-2000, who apparently suggested that if they had been doped above 50%, then Riis must have been doped to at least 60% since he was able to win the Tour de France in 1996 ahead of the Festina rider Richard Virenque. The nickname has since caught the public imagination, and is today mostly kept alive by hostile media.

Career highlights

• 1989
  • Stage 9, Giro d'Italia
  • Stage 2, Tour of European Community
  • 95th Overall, Tour de France
• 1990
  • Stage 7 and Stage 9, Tour of European Community
• 1991
  • 107th Overall, Tour de France
• 1992
  • Danish Road Racing Championship
• 1993
  • Stage 7, Giro d'Italia
  • Stage 7 and 5th Overall, Tour de France
• 1994
  • Stage 13 and 14th Overall, Tour de France
• 1995
  • Danish Road Racing Championship
  • Stage 3B and Overall, Danmark Rundt
  • 3rd Overall, Tour de France
• 1996
  • Danish Road Racing Championship
  • Danish Individual Time Trial Championship
  • Stage 9, Stage 16, and 1st Overall, Tour de France
  • Coppa Sabatini
• 1997
  • Amstel Gold Race
  • Stage 4A, GP Wilhelm Tell
  • 7th Overall, Tour de France
• 1998
  • Stage 5, Vasca a Arrate
  • 11th Overall, Tour de France

Team manager

Following his retirement, a new life opened up. Bjarne Riis had from the start been one of the people behind Danish cycling team Home-Jack & Jones, which became the first Danish team competing in the Tour de France. Following doping allegations and suspension of Home-Jack & Jones rider Marc Streel in 1999, Home withdrew its sponsorship. Bjarne Riis bought the majority of the team through its controlling company Professional Cycling Denmark (PCD), and he became the team manager. In 2001, the team changed sponsor to CSC/World Online, then CSC/Tiscali, and as of the 2003 season the American IT company CSC has been the sole sponsor of Team CSC. Riis renamed PCD to Riis Cycling A/S in 2003. Before the 2005 season, Team CSC had financial problems and some of the riders were asked to take a wage cut. Riis used his own money to keep the team running throughout his first years as team manager, an expenditure he later vowed never to repeat when a new sponsor deal was signed during the 2005 Tour de France.

Literature

• Mader, Jørn. Ørnen fra Herning - bogen om Bjarne Riis (The eagle from Herning - the book about Bjarne Riis), Denmark, 1995, ISBN 87-412-2850-2
• Werge, Lars. Drømmeholdet - historien om CSC (The dream team - the history of CSC), Denmark, 2005, ISBN 87-7731-206-6

External links

• Riis Cycling