Showing the effects of his disrupted preparation for the Tour, Ireland’s Nicolas Roche lost time to the general classification riders yesterday when he finished 40th on the stage to Mûr-de-Bretagne. The Ag2r la Mondiale leader was paced across the line by team-mate Sébastien Hinault, and was very drained afterwards.
Roche had been in the chase pack behind the Evans/Contador group, but cracked inside the final kilometre; it finished eight seconds behind the stage winner, while Roche conceded a further eleven.
“I knew it was going to be very hard, but I was hoping it wouldn’t be quite so tough,” he told VeloNation afterwards. “What I hoped and the reality were a bit different. I almost made it, I was the last man to drop off from the group ahead. I am a bit angry with that, I was better being at eight seconds than 19 seconds because of the time split. I would have been satisfied to have finished with that Basso group, which was only a few seconds ahead of me.”
Roche had said that he expected it to take a week or more to get back into the rhythm of racing due to the disruption to his Tour preparations when he crashed heavily last month. He was lacking a few percent on the final climb and with the riders going flat out in the battle for the stage win, that different revealed itself.
“I am disappointed; I would have liked to have been with the top guys, but on the other hand I hope that today will do me good for the next few days,” he said, believing that the effort might open him up. “I definitely needed to do some really hard work to get my system going. The last time I sprinted like that was back in the Dauphine a month ago, and I had the crash and everything since then. Hopefully this week will ride me in. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that the legs do come back and that I will be capable of performing well in the mountains.”
Last month, Roche finished fifth on the first mountain stage in the Dauphiné, and had hoped to take another top five placing in one of the three final uphill finishes. He started the third-last stage sixteenth overall and believed it was possible to chase a final finishing position of eighth on GC. However a big crash close to the end of that stage caused him to lose chunks of time and, badly cut and bruised, he was a non-starter the following morning.
The injuries required him to take five full days off the bike, and he said he could still feel stiffness in the Irish national championships towards the end of June.
Had he been in full shape, yesterday’s finish would have been to his liking. “It was a very, very particular climb. There were guys like Hushovd and other sprinters in there, so it was a very particularly climb. It is the type of climb which suits me when I am in top form. The next test now is on Saturday to Super Besse, so I have a few days to get the rhythm without digging into tiredness.
“I didn’t lose much, ten seconds or whatever is better than losing five minutes next week. The only thing I am worried about is I don’t want to lose five minute next week…I hope things click now.”
Despite finishing behind the leaders, he moved up from 40th to 27th overall in the race. He starts today’s mainly flat 158 kilometre stage from Carhaix to Cap Fréhel one minute 12 seconds behind Hushovd.
Roche finished 15th in last year’s Tour, then went on to place seventh overall in the Vuelta a España.