Danish Bjarne Riis , winner of the Tour de France 1996 and sports director since 2000, will return to the first division of cycling as manager of the NTT Pro Cycling Team, which until last year was called Dimension Data. The acquisition by its Danish Virtu Cycling team of a third of the company that manages the South African WorldTour team has made the director who confessed at least five years of doping when he was a runner in the new head of the African team.

Bjarne Riis said Wednesday in Copenhagen that it is not true that he returns to cycling, since he had never left. And it's true. After his forced departure from the Tinkoff (dismissed mid-2015 by owner Oleg Tinkov) he managed the Team Virtu of his country and has now completed an operation that revitalizes a very economically limited team for the top category and that, in addition to cycling, maintains a bicycle mobility project in the South African country, Qhubeka.

Bjarne Riis has been director of the Jack & Jones, CSC, Saxo Bank, Tinkoff and Team Virtu-Véloconcept teams. "We will have the possibility of creating one of the best cycling teams in the world," said the Danish in Copenhagen. This season has a payroll of 27 runners, seven of them neoprofessionals. Its strongest runners are Victor Campenaerts, Edvald Boasson-Hagen, Ben King , veteran Roman Kreuziger and Spaniard Carlos Barbero .

Paris-Nice, March 8-15

In addition, this Wednesday the Paris-Nice tour has been presented, which this year will have a special interest on the part of the candidates for the Tour de France. The 'Grande Boucle' will start in the capital of the Côte d'Azur and in its second stage the Colmiane cabbage will be climbed, the end of the seventh and penultimate of this Paris-Nice.

The tour imitates the northern classics in their first two days, in the third it proposes a marathon in a scenario suitable for fans and intersperses a 15 km clock on the fourth day. Two more opportunities for sprinters will approach the traditional fight in the mountains near Nice, on Saturday and Sunday.

Durbridge defeats Dennis

The double world time trial champion Rohan Dennis (Ineos) failed again in the fight for the Australian specialty title against Luke Durbridge (Mitchelton-Scott) who prepares the event in a special way. In 37.5 km there was a difference between both of 18 seconds. Chris Harper, who debuted the Jumbo-Visma's jersey, took the bronze already 1:52 from the winner.

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