Bjarne Riis has sold Team Saxo-Tinkoff to Oleg Tinkov but will continue as team manager for the coming three years. This will allow him to focus more on the sporting aspects and according to Nicolas Roche, this will be of great benefit to the team that will now be known as Team Tinkoff-Saxo.

The ownership of Team Saxo-Tinkoff may have changed after it was announced that Bjarne Riis has sold the team to Russian businessman Oleg Tinkov. However, nothing will change when it comes to the management of the team as Riis will continue in a management role for the coming three years.

In fact, his decision will allow him to focus more on sporting aspects as the team now has financial stability. In the last couple of years, Riis has spent much time searching for new sponsors which has both taken away his focus from the racing and created great uncertainty within the team.

In 2014 Riis will have the freedom to be much more involved in the racing and plans to attend more races. At the press conference where the purchase was announced, team captain Alberto Contador and Nicolas Roche both expressed their satisfaction that Riis will be much closer to them in the years to come.

In 2013 Roche worked for Contador in the first part of the season, including the Tour de France, but got his own chance at the Vuelta a Espana. He performed better than ever, finished 5th overall, won a stage and wore the leader's jersey.

Riis was present for much of the race and Roche is keen to stress that the Dane's presence was one of the factors that allowed him to shine. He expects to benefit even further from the experienced manager in 2014.

"That’s something I'm really looking forward to," he told Cyclingnews. "When Bjarne's around, the team is just that extra bit focused and that brings some extra excitement to the race. He comes with ideas that change the profile of the race. He takes the extra bit of risk in races, when maybe some sports directors mightn't be ready to take the risk, which is normal too.

"I think Bjarne's really strong when it comes to creating team spirit and putting together a team that’s really dedicated to its leader, and that makes a huge difference."

While Roche is happy to be closer to Riis, he is also looking forward to the improvements that can be made by virtue of the additional funding that comes from Tinkov.

"It's more finances to organise training camps and things like that," he said. "I can only see it being beneficial. I don't think racing makes you progress – training makes you progress. And training camps are a lot more costly than racing. For young riders, when you want to show them how to train and teach them about diet, you can only do it on training camps. So if we're going to have more training camps, that can only be beneficial for top riders but also for the young riders who learn a lot from that."

In 2014 Roche will change his race schedule to focus on the Giro that starts in Belfast and passes through his native Ireland. He expects to ride in support of Contador in the Tour.