When he was not selected for the 1984 Summer Olympics, former cyclist Kim Andersen advised Bjarne Riis to start his professional career not in Italy, but in Luxembourg.
21 Facts About Bjarne Riis
2.
Bjarne Riis's professional career started in 1986, his first result was a fifth-place finish in the GP Wallonie that year.
3.
Bjarne Riis helped Fignon win the 1989 Giro d'Italia, while Bjarne Riis himself won his first professional victory as he secured the 9th stage of the Giro.
4.
Bjarne Riis won stage 7 of the 1993 Tour de France and wore the polka dot jersey as leader of the mountains classification for a day.
5.
Bjarne Riis finished 5th place overall, which was the best Danish result in Tour history at the time, bettering former World Champion Leif Mortensen's 6th-place finish in the 1971 Tour de France.
6.
Bjarne Riis finished 3rd at the 1995 Tour de France, the first Dane to reach the podium in Paris.
7.
Bjarne Riis asked his new teammates to support him, and convinced them that if they worked for him he could bring the yellow jersey to Team Telekom.
8.
The win by Bjarne Riis was instrumental in turning Telekom from a second tier cycling team which struggled just to be invited into the 1995 Tour, into one of the biggest teams in road racing.
9.
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 Riis finishing 7th.
10.
On his way to the startup at stage 2 of the 1999 Tour de Suisse, Bjarne Riis hit the curb and crashed.
11.
Bjarne Riis never tested positive as a rider, though no EPO test existed at that time.
12.
Reports have noted that police in Italy found evidence that Bjarne Riis may have been among riders treated with EPO in 1994 and 1995 by medical researchers under Professor Francesco Conconi at the University of Ferrara, which resulted in prosecutions against Conconi and involved Michele Ferrari.
13.
Bjarne Riis said that he bought and injected the EPO himself, and team coach Walter Godefroot turned a blind eye to the drug use on the team.
14.
Bjarne Riis said if someone wanted to take his yellow jersey they could do so, it meant nothing to him.
15.
Bjarne Riis was removed from the official record books of Tour de France, but in July 2008 he was written back into the books, along with additional notes about his use of doping.
16.
In November 2010 Bjarne Riis published a book about his career as a rider, emphasizing that doping throughout the time he had competed was not considered by the peloton as "cheat", but simply as a part of the "normal preparation" for a professional rider.
17.
Bjarne Riis bought the majority of the team through its controlling company Professional Cycling Denmark, and he became the team manager.
18.
Bjarne 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.
19.
However, in Tyler Hamilton's book, "The Secret Race," is described how Bjarne Riis actively encouraged the use of doping on the CSC team.
20.
In March 2015 the team confirmed that Bjarne Riis had been removed from active duty due to differences between Bjarne Riis and Tinkov.
21.
In January 2020 Bjarne Riis was appointed as manager of the NTT_Pro_Cycling team.