Bjarne Lykkegård Riis (Danish pronunciation: [ˈpjɑːnə ˈʁiˀs]; born 3 April 1964), nicknamed The Eagle from Herning (Danish: Ørnen fra Herning), is a Danish former professional road bicycle racer and cycling team manager. Noted for his victory in the 1996 Tour de France, where he dethroned five‑time defending champion Miguel Indurain.
Riis's other major victories include the Amstel Gold Race in 1997 and multiple Danish national road race titles, and he took stage wins at the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia. After retiring in 2000, he founded and managed Team CSC, which competed under successive sponsors as Saxo Bank, Saxo Bank–SunGard and Tinkoff-Saxo and was one of the leading squads of the 2000s and early 2010s. Following the team's sale to Russian businessman Oleg Tinkov in late 2013, Riis continued as manager until he was dismissed in March 2015 after a dispute with Tinkov.
On 25 May 2007, Riis admitted he had used EPO, growth hormone and cortisone between 1993 and 1998, including during his Tour de France victory. The Tour's organisers, ASO, initially removed him from the list of winners, but in July 2008 reinstated his 1996 result with a footnote acknowledging his doping confession, after the UCI determined that the WADA Code's then-applicable eight-year statute of limitations had expired. Speaking at a cycling conference in Copenhagen in June 2025, Riis said he was not ashamed of his doping past, calling it "part of that period and a system that we all silently accepted".
Born in Herning, Riis began cycling at local club Herning CK. When he was not selected for the 1984 Summer Olympics, former cyclist Kim Andersen advised Riis to start his professional career not in Italy, but in Luxembourg. His professional career started in 1986, his first result was a fifth-place finish in the GP Wallonie that year. Following a few years with no personal wins, he had yet to impress when his contract ran out in 1988.
At the 1988 Tour of European Community race, while riding for the Toshiba team, Riis and fellow Danish rider Kim Eriksen were contacted by the former Tour de France winner Laurent Fignon from the Système U team. Fignon was leading the Tour of the European Community race, but he needed a few riders to help him secure the victory. In the hope of earning a contract with Système U, Riis helped Fignon achieve the victory, and in December 1988, he moved to sports director Cyrille Guimard's Système U team as a support rider for Fignon. For the next three years, Riis rode as Fignon's eternal helper in both flat and mountainous terrain, and they became close friends. Riis helped Fignon win the 1989 Giro d'Italia, while Riis himself won his first professional victory as he secured the 9th stage of the Giro.
When Fignon left Guimard in 1992, Bjarne Riis contacted fellow Danish rider Rolf Sørensen, who got him a job as a rider for the Italian team Ariostea under sporting director Giancarlo Ferretti. Riis won stage 7 of the 1993 Tour de France and also wore the polka dot jersey as leader of the mountains classification for a day. He 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. Riis was ill during the 1994 Tour de France but went on a breakaway and then raced solo for the last 30 km of the day. With the sprinter teams chasing him, he placed first on the stage by just a few seconds. Riis finished 3rd at the 1995 Tour de France, the first Dane to reach the podium in Paris.
For the 1996 season, Riis was brought on to the Telekom team as team captain. Following his excellent showing in the high climbs of the 1995 Tour, Riis was confident that he was capable of winning. He 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. By the start of the Tour, he was in superb condition, winning the Danish Road Racing Championship the week before the prologue. As a result of snow on both the Col de l'Iseran and the Col du Galibier, the scheduled 190 km stage 9 from Val-d'Isère to Sestriere in Italy was truncated and reduced to a 46 km sprint from Le-Monetier-les-Bains which was claimed by Riis, opening a 44-second gap over his teammate Jan Ullrich. By the Tour's end, Riis had placed first in the General classification, with a lead of 1:41 over his young teammate Ullrich. In so doing, he ended the string of five successive victories won by Tour great Miguel Indurain. The win by 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. It also had a huge positive effect on the development of cycling in both Denmark and Germany, massively increasing spectator interest and participation in the sport as well.
In 1997, he placed first in the spring classic Amstel Gold Race, with a great effort, riding solo from a long way out, in pouring rain. 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. On his way to the start at stage 2 of the 1999 Tour de Suisse, Bjarne Riis hit the curb and crashed. The sustained injuries to his elbow and knee ultimately forced him to retire in the spring of 2000 at the age of 36.
In the aftermath of the performance-enhancing drugs crisis in cycling following the 1998 Tour de France, Riis acquired the nickname of Mr. 60%, a suggestion that he has used doping. The 60% is an allusion to a high hematocrit (red blood cell) level, an indication of EPO usage. It has been published, but never proven, that Riis had a hematocrit level of 56% during one test in July 1995; well above typical natural levels, as well as his published reading of 41% in the offseason earlier that year. The earliest mention of the nickname can be traced to interviews with riders of Festina in 1998–2000, who apparently suggested that if they had been doped above 50%, then Riis must have been doped to at least 60%, since he was able to win the Tour de France in 1996 ahead of the Festina rider Richard Virenque: in Willy Voet's book Breaking the Chain, he mentions that Festina's team doctor would not allow EPO to be administered if a rider's hematocrit level was near 55%.
Bjarne Riis never tested positive as a rider, though no EPO test existed at that time. Reports have noted, however, that police in Italy found evidence that 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 also involved Michele Ferrari. Files used in the court case apparently showed fluctuations in Riis' hematocrit from 41% to 56.3%.
Speculations about Bjarne Riis's doping use was further fuelled by his ambiguous denials. When asked whether he used doping, he repeatedly stated that "I have never tested positive," a statement that falls short of an outright denial.
At the end of April 2007, former Riis' soigneur Jeff d'Hont wrote a book about the doping practices of Riis and other riders during his time in the cycling business.
On 21 May 2007, Riis' former Telekom teammate Bert Dietz admitted that he had used doping during his Telekom-time. This prompted other former teammates, Christian Henn and Udo Bölts, and two former team doctors, to admit their involvement in doping. On 24 May, three other teammates Rolf Aldag, Erik Zabel and Brian Holm confessed.
Following this series of confessions, on 25 May 2007 Riis issued a press release that he also had made "mistakes" in the past, and in the following press conference confessed to taking EPO, growth hormone and cortisone for 6 years, from 1993 to 1998, including during his victory in the 1996 Tour de France.
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. He denied a passage of Jeff d'Hont's book, where it is related that his hematocrit level was once tested by the team and registered 64%. He said if someone wanted to take his yellow jersey, they could do so; it meant nothing to him. Riis was removed from the official record books of the Tour de France, but in July 2008, he was written back into the books, along with additional notes about his use of doping.