Ireland’s Nicolas Roche has said that he has burned up his reserves by doing two Grand Tours, and is looking forward to the end of the season. The 26 year old Irishman faded towards the end of Sunday’s world championship road race, and will spend an extra four days in Australia to relax and unwind.
“I am not 100 percent sure, but I do hope it is the final race of the year,” he told VeloNation, needing to get confirmation from his Ag2r La Mondiale team. “It has been a long season, and I tried to keep focussed as much as I could for the duration of it. At some stage you can’t keep going full gas. When the tank is empty, it is empty.”
Roche was involved in a big 32 man break which went clear approximately 90 kilometres from the end of Sunday’s race. He was with the main race contenders there but faded later on, eventually coming home as part of a big group 13 minutes 53 seconds behind the sprint winner Thor Hushod.
That was a long way off the form he showed in netting seventh overall in the Vuelta a España. However he maintains that arriving in Australia last Wednesday wasn’t detrimental to his form, as he considers the issue to be a more general fatigue than that of jet lag.
“The race wasn’t too bad. I didn’t know what to expect,” he told VeloNation. “Once I was in the race, I was feeling all right, but I just didn’t make the distance. I went from feeling great 200 kilometres in to, 15 kilometres later, not feeling great any more.”
Pozzato had mentioned Roche as being one of his tips for the worlds. It didn’t work out that way, but he wasn’t demoralised by that. He’s able to see the bigger picture, given that this was the first year he did two Grand Tours in one season.
He also knows that few others in the race had ridden both the Tour and the Vuelta at a high level. In fact, of those who finished in the top ten in the Vuelta and also raced in France in July, Luis Leon Sanchez was the only one other than Roche to make the trip to Australia.
In the end, the Spaniard was a non-finisher. Because of that, and the fact that so few did well in both, Roche is able to keep things in perspective. “I have had a long season. When Phil [Leigh, Cycling Ireland’s High Performance Director] asked me if I wanted to come to the worlds after the Vuelta, I thought I’d give it a shot,” he said. “I couldn’t promise him anything, other than saying that I would do my best.”
“I was happy enough, I guess. Until I completely blew, I was riding well. There were three or four big moves, I was always up the front with them. When they started riding [hard] after 150 kilometres, there was already a move of 15 to 20 riders and I was there. I was in the later moves too, following Pozzato and Gilbert.
“I was racing well, but I just didn’t have it on the day to go the full 260 kilometres. Being tired had nothing to do with the time difference or flying in this week. It’s just the legs, the training and the tank being empty.”