Nicolas Roche has remained upbeat about his start to the Tour de France, despite crashing twice on yesterday’s stage to Brussels.
The Ag2r La Mondiale team leader twice hit the deck on the first road stage, but could see the plus side to how things turned out. “I am okay…Just some bruises and grazing,” he told VeloNation afterwards. “It’s nothing too serious. I am actually pretty fortunate, considering that I crashed twice. The first was at 40 kilometres per hour and the other was at over 50, yet I ended up with just a couple of cuts and bruises.”
Roche was one of those who came a cropper when a dog strolled out in front of the peloton, and then later found himself in trouble again with about a kilometre to go. Several riders came down and when he slammed on the brakes, his front wheel locked and turned sideways. It hit the steel feet of the crowd control barriers and threw him onto it.
He felt that this saved him from serious injury. “Luckily enough I landed on the barriers, so that cushioned the fall,” he said. “I’m a bit cut and bruised, but the legs are okay.”
He rolled home 152nd but like the other riders who were caught up in crashes inside the final three kilometres, Roche was given the same time as the stage winner. He actually improved two places in the general classification, going from 47th to 45th overall.
Roche finished 23rd overall in his debut Tour and is aiming for a top 15 finish this time round. He had hoped to get the race off to a start on Saturday with a top 20 finish in the prologue, but had to be satisfied with 47th. However he did take time out of most of the GC riders.
“Top 20 would have been superb, but I was satisfied enough, time-wise,” he said. “Okay, honestly I would have preferred to have been five or six seconds quicker, but everyone would say that. I think it wasn’t a great prologue, but it was a decent one.”
The plan now is to play things safe and hope that luck is with him in the nervous stages ahead. “I want to just stay out of trouble in the next few days – hopefully everything will go fine,” he stated.