Image 1 of 4 Brothers in arms: Riis and Tinkov at the team's training camp (Image credit: Bettini Photo) Image 2 of 4 Oleg Tinkov at the race village. (Image credit: Fotoreporter Sirotti) Image 3 of 4 Alberto Contador lost a few seconds but still leads the race (Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com) Image 4 of 4 Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff) (Image credit: Susanne Goetze)

Hello and welcome to my second blog for Cyclingnews. I'm writing after an amazing skiing trip to Kamchatka with our general manager Stefano Feltrin and friends in the far east of Russia. We went helicopter skiing amongst the active volcanoes on incredible snow. It wasn't really off-piste skiing because there we no piste. We made them!





We joked about merging with Cannondale and so signing Peter Sagan for 2015. A lot of people and even parts of the Danish media who love to be super serious all the time, fell for it, which was a big laugh for me.





With Sagan in our team we would obviously be a major contender in the Cobbled classics. Unfortunately we didn't have a great cobbled campaign this year because of injuries to Oliver Zaugg, Matti Breschel and Daniele Bennati. However I am very confident for the Ardennes Classics and think Roman Kreuziger can do well again after winning the Amstel Gold Race last year. I'll be in Belgium next week for Liege-Bastogne-Liege and so I hope the team can get a result while I'm there. No pressure boys!

As a final point, I want to reveal that we had a meeting with the new UCI President Brian Cookson recently. It was very constructive and interesting. I'm sure Brian is going to change cycling for the better, and cycling will be very different in the years to come. I feel that almost everyone in the sport agrees that cycling at the highest level needs to be managed much more professionally and not to be monopolized by any party. That's good!

I plan to write my next blog from sunny Italy as I ride every day during the Giro d'Italia. I am planning to do whole three weeks on the race. My ski season is officially closed now, and it's time for the bike, starting on May 9th in Northern Ireland. I can't wait!