Cycling-Saxo Bank to drop sponsorship of Tinkoff-Saxo team

COPENHAGEN, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Saxo Bank will not renew the sponsorship of the Tinkoff-Saxo professional cycling team for another season, the Copenhagen-based online foreign exchange brokerage firm said on Thursday. Saxo Bank has sponsored the team with riders such as multi-grand tour winner Spaniard Alberto Contador and sprinter Peter Sagan from Slovakia for the past eight seasons. Speculation around the bank's departure from the sponsorship has been going on for a while after team manager Bjarne Riis left the cycling outfit in March after a dispute with Oleg Tinkov, founder of Russia's Tinkoff Bank, which is the other main sponsor for the team. Riis, the 1996 Tour de France winner who later confessed to doping, has been involved in cycling management since 1999. (Reporting by Ole Mikkelsen, editing by Mitch Phillips)