Bjarne Riis has said goodbye to cycling after nearly 40 years as a professional rider, team owner and manager. An icon of the infamous 1990s period, the 1996 Tour de France winner has said his time in the sport is a “finished chapter” with family and new business ventures in mind.
Riis first revealed his plans in September, confirming his family has also moved back to Denmark from Switzerland. He has recently co-founded the company Riis Energy, which sells heat pumps imported from Lithuania alongside becoming a board member of Nørtec – a company selling laundry appliances and electric vehicle charging stations.
“A cycling team is not much different from a company. Both places are about people. You have to have an organization to function and perform,” said Riis on the company’s website.
“In addition, it is about motivating employees and helping them to utilize their full potential. Why settle for mediocre when you can create world-class instead?”
The Dane took his Tour de France victory a year ahead of Team Telekom teammate Jan Ullrich who has recently made a full confession to doping.
Ullrich was 23 then and went on to win the 1997 Tour de France before building a long rivalry with Lance Armstrong, followed by a difficult period of doping and personal battles with addiction, but is now on a different path to personal redemption.
Ullrich, in contrast to Riis, is eyeing a return to the sport after overcoming the dark times when recreational drugs and alcohol abuse nearly killed him and kept him away from cycling for a long time. He revealed further details of why he doped before the release of the four-part documentary on his troubled life – ‘Der Gejagte’ (‘The Hunted’).
Riis’ doping past was fully uncovered in 2007 when he confessed to using EPO, growth hormone and cortisone during the 1996 Tour. He famously stated: “My yellow jersey is in a box in my garage at home. You can come and collect it.” His win was taken out of record books like Armstrong’s were before being reinstated in 2008 with an asterisk.
Since then Riis went on to play a huge role in the CSC-ProTeam turned Saxo Bank-Tinkoff project as a team owner and then manager, where he oversaw Tour de France victories by Carlos Sastre, Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador.
He also faced fresh doping allegations from riders on the team including Tyler Hamilton and Michael Rasmussen which in 2020 he admitted had hurt and worn him down. That was during one of his final stints in the sport…
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