Bjarne Riis

Bjarne Riis

Bjarne Riis on the California Tour , February 2007
To person
Nickname	Eagle of Herning
Date of birth	April 3, 1964
nation	Denmark
discipline	Street
To the team
Current team	NTT Pro Cycling
function	Manager
doping
1993-1998	EPO , cortisone and growth hormones
Team (s)
1986 1987 1988 1989–1991 1992–1993 1994–1995 1996–1999	Roland-Van de Ven Lucas-Arkel Toshiba Castorama Ariostea Gewiss-Ballan Team Deutsche Telekom
Most important successes
Round trips Tour de France 1996 six stages of the Tour de France two stages of the Giro d'Italia One day race Amstel Gold Race 1997
Team (s) as team manager
2001–2015 July 2016–2018 2020	Tinkoff-Saxo Team Virtu Cycling NTT Pro Cycling
Last updated: January 26, 2020

Bjarne Riis (born April 3, 1964 in Herning ) is a former Danish cyclist , later team manager and sporting director .

In 1996 he became the first and so far only Scandinavian to win the Tour de France . As a result of his admission that he had been doping with EPO , cortisone and growth hormones during this time , he was initially removed from the official list of winners in June 2007. Since doping is statute-barred after eight years, the UCI World Cycling Federation could no longer deny him the victory, and Riis is now officially again listed as the 1996 winner.

Career

Cyclist

Riis started cycling on April 28, 1972 in a children's race. His father Preben had promised him a racing bike for a win and also worked out the first training programs for him. Riis went to Luxembourg in 1984 with Per Pedersen and joined the ACC Contern. In addition to the races and training, he took odd jobs in a car repair shop. In 1985 he achieved 16 victories. He then signed his first contract as a professional driver with the Roland-Scala team together with Brian Holm .

Riis began his professional career in 1986. In the Tour de France, Riis continuously improved: After he was fifth in 1993, he reached third place in 1995. Before the 1996 season, the Dane moved from Gewiss-Ballan to Team Telekom and won the Tour de France that season. He was then voted Denmark's Sportsman of the Year .

The following year Riis won the Amstel Gold Race in the spring , but could not repeat his performance in the Tour de France and finished seventh in the victory of his teammate Jan Ullrich . Riis achieved a total of four stage victories in the Tour and two day wins in the Giro d'Italia . Riis retired in 2000 after never fully recovering from a fall on the 1999 Tour de Suisse .

Grand Tours placements

Grand Tour	1987	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998
Giro d'Italia	-	DNF	86	100	43	101	DNF	70	-	-	-	-
Tour de France	-	-	95	DNF	107	-	5	14th	3	1	7th	11
Vuelta a España	DNF	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	DNF	-	-	-

Legend: DNF: did not finish , abandoned or withdrawn from the race due to timeout.

Team manager

Bjarne Riis on the sidelines of the 2006 Tour de France

After his retirement as a professional cyclist, Riis built up his own successful team through his company Riis Cycling A / S in 2001 , which was initially called the Computer Sciences Corporation Team CSC after the first main sponsor . From 2008 the team u. a. named after the new sponsor Saxo Bank . After Oleg Tinkow bought the team in December 2013, Riis initially remained team manager.

In March 2015 Bjarne Riis was suspended by Oleg Tinkow, the owner of the team that has now been named Tinkoff-Saxo , and then dismissed. Tinkow cited the reason that Riis was not needed. He sees himself as a good substitute for Riis.

In July 2016, Riis and Lars Seier, the former CEO of Saxo-Bank, took over the Danish Continental Team Team TreFor after the previous sponsor announced that it would end its commitment at the end of the year. The team, renamed Team Virtu Pro-Veloconcept , which also rode Riis' son Thomas Nybo , was to serve as a junior team for a UCI WorldTeam . At the end of 2018, the team was disbanded due to a lack of sponsors.

In January 2020, Riis took over the role of team manager at the South African UCI WorldTeam NTT . The company Virtu Cycling Group , which Riis and his business partners Lars Seier Christensen and Jan Bech Andersen belongs, also acquired one-third of the shares in Ryder Cycling , the operating company of the NTT team.

doping

In 1997 Olympic champion Pascal Richard accused Riis of having had a positive doping test in the training camp in Lanzarote. He himself commented on the allegations that he had never tested positive. In a TV interview broadcast on March 26, 2007, the former masseur of Team Telekom Jef D'hont accused Riis of having heavily doped with EPO . In professional circles, Riis was nicknamed "Monsieur 60%", an allusion to the hematocrit value of 60% that he often measured , which was well above normal. The blood doping agent EPO increases the number of red blood cells and thus usually also the hematocrit value, but has only been directly detectable since 2000.

During a press conference in Copenhagen on May 25, 2007, Riis confessed to having taken the doping agent erythropoietin (EPO), growth hormone and cortisone to improve performance from 1993 to 1998 . He bought the EPO and claimed he took it himself. His victory at the Tour de France in 1996 was also under the influence of the doping agent EPO, cortisone and growth substances, as Riis publicly admitted.

The tour title can no longer be officially revoked from Riis, as the eight-year period for it has expired. However, the Tour de France removed him from their list of winners after his doping confession. The final decision, however, lies with the UCI World Cycling Federation; he had only asked Riis to return his yellow jersey. Christian Prudhomme , director of the tour, described Riis as a " persona non grata " that he no longer wanted to see on the Tour of France. As a result, Riis decided not to accompany his CSC team to the 2007 tour. Riis, who had introduced a comparatively extensive doping control program for his team, was welcome again at the 2008 Tour de France .

In autumn 2007, Jörg Jaksche declared that Riis had threatened him with "massive consequences" if Jaksche mentioned names in his 2007 doping confession. The Dane supposedly wanted to “make sure that Jaksche never comes back to cycling”. Riis denied this and stated that she had only given Jaksche advice.

In the course of the doping investigation against Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton , who drove for Team CSC in 2002 and 2003, charged Riis. He brought him together with the Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes , who has since become known through the doping scandal , and knew about his doping program. On July 2, 2013, it became known that the Danish anti-doping agency ADD was investigating Riis, and Michael Rasmussen is a new witness . A report by the ADD and the sports association DIF came to the conclusion in 2015 that Riis had tolerated doping in his team and in some cases ordered it. Riis partially confirmed the finding, saying he failed as a leader.

Private

Riis is married to the former Danish handball player Anne Dorthe Tanderup (* 1972), whom he met at the 1996 Olympic Games . He lives in Lugano with his wife and their four sons .

Others

The Swedish music formation Koop released the song Bjarne Riis on their 1997 album Sons of Koop .

During his playing days, Riis was called the "Herning Eagle". That's why there's an eagle's eye in the Riis Cycling logo and an eagle's head on the Saxobank jersey .

literature

• Jorn Mader: Bjarne Riis. The Herning Eagle. Editions Saint Paul, Luxembourg 1996, ISBN 2-87963-254-4 .

Web links

Commons : Bjarne Riis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Palmarès - List of achievements and placements
• Bjarne Riis in the database of Radsportseiten.net
• Bjarne Riis in the Tour de France database(French / English )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jorn Mader: Bjarne Riis. The Eagle of Toledo . Editions Saint-Paul, 1995, ISBN 2-87963-254-4 , pp. 7th ff .
2. ↑ radsport-news.com - Tinkov suspends Riis. In: radsport-news.com. March 23, 2015, accessed March 24, 2015 . 
3. ↑ radsport-news.com - Tinkoff-Saxo confirms Bjarne Riis' suspension. In: radsport-news.com. March 24, 2015, accessed March 24, 2015 . 
4. ↑ Tinkoff-Saxo dissolves contract with Riis. radsport-news.com, March 29, 2015, accessed March 29, 2015 . 
5. ↑ Oleg Tinkov blog: I think I'm a good substitution for Bjarne Riis. cyclingnews.com, May 7, 2015, accessed August 2, 2015 . 
6. ↑ Riis is back - but in the third division. radsport-News.com, July 27, 2016, accessed on July 27, 2016 . 
7. ↑ Team NTT: Bjarne Riis becomes the new team manager. In: Velomotion. January 8, 2020, accessed on January 8, 2020 (German). 
8. ↑ Riis becomes the new team manager at NTT Pro Cycling. In: radsport-news.com. January 8, 2010, accessed January 8, 2020 . 
9. ↑ Doping key witness Jaksche does not consider the returnee Riis to be purified (January 22, 2020)
10. ↑ Epo was part of my everyday life Spiegel Online , May 25, 2007.
11. ↑ L'Équipe of June 7, 2007: Pas de vainqueur en 1996…  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
12. ↑ CSC and Milram. Riis and Stanga stay at home ( memento of July 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). In: tour.ard.de , July 5, 2007. Gianluigi Stanga from Team Milram also had to forego participating in the 2007 Tour de France.
13. ↑ Jörg Schallenberg: Bjarne is back , Spiegel Online, July 24, 2008
14. ↑ Riis is said to have threatened Jaksche , Spiegel Online, October 29, 2007
15. ↑ radsport-news.com of November 5, 2012: Hamilton: "Riis brought me together with Fuentes"
16. ↑ of November 3, 2013: "The air is getting thinner for Bjarne Riis."
17. ^ Doping report: Riis admits major mistakes zeit.de June 26, 2015
18. ^ Nikoline Vestergaard: Bjarne Riis and Anne Dorthe: Vores liv med løgnen. Søndagsavisen , November 5, 2010, archived from the original on October 2, 2013 ; Retrieved October 2, 2013 (Danish). 
19. ↑ Kenan Seeberg: Anne Dorthe: Bjarne reddede mig fra krævende kæreste ( Danish ) BT . September 6, 2013. Accessed June 15, 2015.
20. ↑ Anne Dorte Tanderup: Guldets pris ( Danish ) Krop + fysik . Archived from the original on June 15, 2015. Retrieved June 15, 2015.