Clearly relieved to get the end of the Tour de France in Paris yesterday, Nicolas Roche will use the days ahead to recover in advance of next Saturday’s Clasica San Sebastian.
The Irishman was below his usual form in the Tour, and told VeloNation yesterday that the final days of the race were tough ones for him.
The Irishman went on the attack on last Thursday’s stage to the Galibier Serre Chevalier, the highest finish in Tour history, and was sitting third in the winning move until ten kilometres to go. The effects of that long break remained long after he crossed the finish line. “The last few days haven’t been as good as I expected,” he said in a video interview on the Place de la Concorde.
“It has been very up and down. I played it all on the Galibier stage…all I had left was thrown in there. Friday I paid the price for it, and yesterday [Saturday], even worse. I’d be a very dishonest man if I said I did it easy, but unfortunately I started with the will of doing it pretty concentrated and once I was off the ramp, I realised it was going nowhere.”
Roche had hoped to do a solid ride in Saturday’s 42.5 kilometre time trial in Grenoble, but his fatigue meant that he finished a long way off the leaders. He finished towards the back of the main bunch on the final stage to the Champs Elysées, and ended the race 26th overall, 46 minutes 23 seconds off the time of Cadel Evans.
Roche was injured in the run up to the race, crashing hard in the Critérium du Dauphiné. This meant that he was unable to match or better his 15th place overall last year.
“Finishing the Tour is a very different feeling than the one I was expecting,” he said. “I am really happy it is done and dusted and everything, but I came with ambitions…trying to go for GC. Even if GC wasn’t going to go right, I’d give it a proper go on the stage. I tried, but at the end of the day when I do my statistics, I haven’t been great. I have enjoyed myself on two occasions going up the road, so I did take a bit of pleasure, but I also took a few lessons.”
Roche will almost certainly ride the Vuelta a España, where he will hope to improve on the seventh place overall he took last year.