Irishman ambitious starting third Tour
It’s been a complicated year for Ireland’s Nicolas Roche, who has based his entire season around being ready for the Tour de France. He was twice sidelined with injury during the winter months, crashed heavily in Flèche Wallonne and also had a big fall in the Critérium du Dauphiné. The net result has been that his season has been much quieter than last year’s thus far; still, even so, he starts the Tour de France today with strong ambitions.
“I will just take it day by day, making my programme around that [strategy],” he told VeloNation this week. “I am still sticking to my goal of taking top ten in the general classification, that is very important for me. I have done an ideal preparation until my crash, so hopefully with things now getting back in line and my body recovering, the work will come back out.”
Roche’s debut Tour saw him take several top 12 stage placings, including second and fourth on stages, as well as 23rd overall. Last year was better; although his sprinting performances were deliberately lower key, he ended up 15th overall in Paris. He could have been higher had he not had a run in with John Gadret, his French Ag2r la Mondiale team-mate who refused to follow team orders on stage 15. When Roche punctured at a crucial moment on the climb of the Port de Bales, Gadret ignored his request for a wheel, despite the fact that the Irishman was the team leader.
This led to a very angry reaction in his diary in the Irish Independent; twelve months on, things are civil. “Everything is fine,” he said. “I am not going to go for New Year’s dinner or a barbeque with him, but there is no problem with work. We will get the race done. I don’t think there’s any worries about that.”
Once of Roche’s big career goals is to win a stage in the race, and so too to finish as high as possible in the general classification. Because of that second goal, he is going to put the first aside for now; there may be a chance later in the race, but the priority is different early on.
“It is obvious that I won’t be aggressive in the first week,” he explained. “I will try to save as much energy as possible and to try to get the legs into good shape. At the same time, I will need to keep in contact with the other GC guys…there is no point in having fresh legs if I am three minutes behind.
“The finish on Saturday is pretty hard, pretty nasty. But then again it is the Tour, so there might not be big gaps. It is definitely going to be the first effort, though, one where you will have to dig in. Of course the Mur de Bretagne follows a few days afterwards and that will be a tough finish.
“As regards the team time trial…we have a solid team, including Christophe Riblon, who just got second in the French championships. There are a couple of good guys there to get it organised. So hopefully we can have good time trial and not lose too much time.”
Roche admits that his Dauphiné crash has complicated things for him. He missed the final two stages of the race and was unable to train for five days afterward the impact. Fourth in last weekend’s Irish road race championships also showed that he was lacking something, but he said beforehand that he would have to rely on tactics rather than strength as he was still stiff. In the end, his head wasn’t able to overcome the legs of others. However given more time, he thinks he will come good.
“The dream scenario is that over the next few days, my legs will come back as they were in the Dauphiné,” he told VeloNation. “When I do my training now, when I do my sprints or whatever, I don’t feel the best.
“But the reason I don’t feel the best just because of the crash, not because of the lack of training. I think that once my body has recovered, my condition will be good. It is not like I am chasing form…for once, this time, the form was there. It should be the case that it will slowly but surely come back after the bruises go down.”