Bjarne Riis is a man of few words. If there comes any.
The Danish cykelpersonlighed is extremely good to remain silent. Avoid contact. Avoid the issues. And decide when the public should hear something from Bjarne Riis.
But in a long inteview with the magazine Rouleur says Riis a lot. Very much.
Also on the many danes would like to hear from preferably on. The gloomy dopingfortid.
“When I stopped cycling, I was tired of it. It was in 1998-1999, and honestly, so were all tired of cycling. I could not handle it any more. I wanted to get out. No one took care of the bike. Everything was doping. All the questions were from to talk about races and strategy to defend one’s own existence,” explains Bjarne Riis in the long interview.
The 55-year-old herningenser has invited Rouleur in conversations about, among other things, the time as a rider, but also as a team owner and cycling’s impact on dane’s life.
And it has been quite a considerable.
Bjarne Riis was an active professional cyclist from 1986 and officially to 2000. His pension was, however, a crash in 1999, on the road from the hotel and go to the beginning of a stage in Switzerland Around.
at the Time the dane was active, was the reality for cyclists in a completely different way. Although there is still to this day eaten supplements and other in great style, there were almost no limits to how many preparations that were poured into the riders, then Bjarne Riis drove.
The hæftige consumption did, in fact, that the dane refrained from certain kinds of medicine for almost two decades.
“In fact, I was so tired of it that I took aspirin for 17 years. You must keep in mind that we had to take all sorts of things as we drove in the 1990s. I am not talking about doping. It was there of course, but I’m talking about all sorts of other crap, which we today know is totally ubrueligt. Most of it was total waste of time and money,” says Bjarne Riis.
Dopingen has had a big impact on the former cykelhelts life. So much so, that it is something he has also been a need to talk about with his sons.
Them have Riis, six in all, including Thomas Nybo Riis, who is 27 years old and has cycled itself.
“My sons dope not. It guarantees I. We have had the talk. They have seen what their dad has gone through. ‘Do you really want to down the road? I don’t think that you want to’. I’m so proud of them. No matter where we move around in the world,” he says.
even Though Bjarne Riis rarely takes the word in the media, he has long been good to fill the media anyway. In the recent past, there have been increasing rumors that Microsoft is on the way back in leading a team in the big cykelscene. The choice is supposedly dropped on the Team Dimension of the Data, which from 2020 will be called Team NTT.
the Team spoke in advance of the star Michael Valgren, but from the turn of the year joins Lars Michaelsen and his namesake Lars Bak as sportsdirektører, while the young Andreas Stokbro comes in as the new rider on the team. You can read more about it here.
