The last week, Sean Yates returned to manage Tinkoff-Saxo at the Tour of Oman. Indeed, it is his first race after a two year break from the World Tour since he left the Team Sky at the end of 2012. The British former rider explained that he could not refuse the Tinkoff Saxo offer.

“Chris Froome’s Tour de France win? I watched everything. My life is cycling, it has been for 40 years,” Yates told Cycling Weekly. “I was able to look after my children. My sons ride, they are 21 and 18. I coached them. I had a big transit van, and we went to races and trips to watch the Tour two years running. The Tinkoff-Saxo offer was not one I could turn down, really. If I turned it down, then it’d definitely be over for me.”

He will direct the Russian team at Paris-Nice, Pais Vasco and the Ardennes Classics. “I’m not on Alberto Contador‘s schedule, that’s Steven de Jongh,” he added, “but I’m down to do the Tour with Steven and Alberto.”

He understands that some people criticized his decision to join Tinkoff Saxo in which there are some problems with doping: the team manager Bjarne Riis who admittted doping for example. “I decided to come to it,” said Yates. “I believe the team is going in the right direction.”

Besides Yates, the team hired former Sky men Michael Rogers, Julich and de Jongh. “I worked with Bjarne before. Julich and de Jongh too. Julich left BMC, he didn’t like it there so he came to Tinkoff with [head of sports science] Dan Healey,” Yates said. “Guys like Mick Rogers, who’d been at Sky, saw how Sky worked, and the general feeling was that Tinkoff-Saxo had to step up on the DS/coach front, and move forward because they were lagging a bit.”