Nicolas Roche’s tour de force, in his own words

Regular readers will know that here at the Evening Hérault we have become big fans of Irish cyclist Nicolas Roche.

“Nico” has had an amazing debut in this year’s Tour de France, and has turned out to be a very determined, intelligent and articulate young rider.

Despite having to knuckle down and work for over a week for team-mate Rinaldo Nocentini (race leader at the time), Roche still managed to finish 23rd overall yesterday, and came fifth in the best young rider rankings and sixth in the points classification.

Here are some very brief quotes from him at various stages in this gruelling marathon…

Stage 2: early promise

“Eighth on my first Tour de France stage! On such a long tour, I don’t know if a good start is half the battle, but I’m very happy.

“My Dad (Irish cycling legend Stephen Roche) called in to the team hotel last night and told me I needed to calm down. I was an absolute nervous wreck before the prologue. I always get nerves before a race, but this was unbelievable. I was almost rattling.

“He advised me to take a breather and said that by being stressed, I was wasting more energy. Yesterday was hectic, though, with a lot of argy-bargy in the final kilometres, and the butterflies came fluttering back any time I heard the noise of mangled metal scraping along the ground in one of the day’s many crashes.”

Working with the wind

Determined, intelligent, articulate: Nicolas Roche

“The first thing you learn when you start cycling is that if you can stay out of the wind, you can save a lot of energy.

“A headwind means you can simply position yourself directly behind the wheel in front of you, saving up to 20% of your energy. A crosswind though, needs a bit more effort.

“I’m really annoyed with myself for missing the split (the Columbia team splitting the peloton in two on Stage 3). I wasn’t in too bad a position when we went around the corner where the wind changed.

“Fair play to the Columbia team. They made a brilliant effort to split the race, and it was panic stations in the bunch.”

Team time trial in Montpellier

“I am not a bad time trialist. I was Irish national champion last year and Rinaldo Nocentini and Christophe Riblon are also good against the clock, but we’re not what you’d call specialists.

“If you get dropped during the course of the stage, you can lose a lot of time as you find yourself racing against eight others from your own team. If you get dropped very early, there is a danger that you will be outside the time limit for the stage and be kicked off the race permanently.

“So there is a fine line between riding flat out to help your team leader get as high up the general classification as possible and conserving enough energy to get yourself to the finish with him.”

Team talks and crosswinds

“Each morning at the team briefing, we get an idea of where the wind will be coming from. Our team manager buys a big oversized map of the local region and redraws the route of the day’s stage on it, so we can see where the dangerous corners.

“Then, during the race, Vincent (Lavenu) tells us on our earpieces: ‘OK, in 15 kilometres you have a right-hand turn where the wind will be a three-quarter tailwind, which will be very dangerous.’

“You pay attention to the wind. You study it in the morning and watch out for flags or other signs of its strength or change in direction during the stage.

“I think the crosswinds on Monday, the team time trial on Tuesday and then more crosswinds yesterday made the last three days really tiring.

Barcelone-Arcalis: a low point

“On the road to Arcalis I lost 14 minutes and all hopes of a high overall placing. I had worked so hard to chase down an earlier breakaway for Nocentini that I had nothing left on the final climb.

“At the bottom of the climb, the guys were saying ‘take it easy, tomorrow is a hard day,’ but they don’t have the motivation that I have. They just want to get in breakaways and don’t give a damn about me being 20th or 30th or whatever.

“OK, if it’s your 10th Tour, maybe you are better off conserving energy and trying to get into breaks some days. But this is my first Tour and I want to ride hard on the climbs to see what I can do. “

Stage 9: sprinting

“I was blocked in a bit in the middle of the group and world champion Allesandro Ballan and Sylvain Chavanel almost crashed in front of me. I slammed on the brakes before the right-hander.

“I gave it all I could to get out of there and dived into the next corner but my pedal hit the ground and I almost came down myself.

“People ask me why I take part in the sprints, but I love it. I love the thrill of people leaning on you, the pushing and elbowing, the split-second decisions that have to be made but I never take any crazy risks.”

Stage 10: the radio ban and the go-slow

“At first we had a laugh. Like big kids, every team had one or two riders who went back to the team car and said stuff like, ‘what did you say? I couldn’t hear you. I think my radio is broken’.

“Instead of telling your team-mate to slow down on the front into the radio, we rode up and grabbed their jersey for the craic.

“It got complicated though as other teams disagreed with the stand-off and insisted on attacking anyway, with four riders breaking clear early on.

“The roads were really dead, like Irish roads, and I don’t think there was a metre of flat road all day. The radio ban actually helped my team though, because if the racing had been flat out all day, the bunch would have been split to bits.

“It would have been a nice sprint for me but the team hasn’t always been happy with me going for the sprints, so yesterday I just did what they asked me to do and didn’t even think about sprinting. I crossed the line in 17th place.

“I also found out that there was a police investigation into the incident that left me with a massive bruise on my leg. The gendarmes confirmed it was an exploding ice compressor.”

Fun with Cav and Nico

(Wednesday 15 July)

“As I was busy going up and down the bunch all day getting bottles for the guys and bringing Efimkin to the doctor, we had two guys, Cyril Dessel and Stephane Goubert, on the front and the rest of the guys were keeping Nocentini out of the wind. It was a hard day, but at the end of it we still had the race lead.

“During the stage, (English sprint ace) Mark Cavendish came up alongside and tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Hey Nico, I think your Dad doesn’t like me,’ he said. I laughed: ‘What do you mean?’ Cav was complaining that my dad was a bit hard on him on Eurosport on Tuesday for his celebrations crossing the line.

“Cav made a phone-call gesture as he won the stage. He explained that it was because his team had a new mobile phone manufacturer as a sponsor and he wanted to give them a wink.

“Some people think Cav is cocky. I have known him for about 10 years and he is the same with me now, after winning eight stages of the Tour and 50 professional races, as he was when he was a junior. I talk with him a fair bit and he always says hello.

Crashes

“Our real overall hope, Vladimir Efimkin, is still pretty cut up after his crash on Wednesday.

“His face is full of open cuts, and in this heat, you can imagine how sore it must be to have salty sweat running into your wounds. His chest is burned from sliding along the road and his legs are in ribbons.

“I’m worried about the mountains. I’ve given a lot in the past week and I’m pretty wrecked. It’s been a fantastic experience but extremely tiring.”

Stage 13: more strange decisions

“I came here aiming for a top five on a stage and threw away the best chance I’ve had all race.

“Of course I’m disappointed. On the other hand, the team gave me the chance to come and ride the Tour. In fairness, from the start, they told me I was just here to work in the mountains. But they do make some strange decisions.

“When they ask me to attack on a flat stage, when they should be keeping me for the mountains stages, I totally disagree with that. It’s a pity for them and for me too.

“I’ve had arguments on the road with riders a bit, as I said last week. But everybody sees things differently. Hopefully we can keep yellow for another day today. It’s not as hard as yesterday.”

Stage 14: a bitter second

“I was defending Nocentini’s jersey in the break and I was so riled by the abuse I got from the Italian riders for following my team orders and not contributing that I couldn’t enjoy my second place.

“My orders were to sit at the back of the group and not contribute to the workload.

“Sitting on the back of a break all day means you can’t win, even if you do cross the line first. If you win, everybody says you didn’t ride all day. If you don’t win, they ask how could you not have won.

“They gave me so much abuse it was unbelievable. They called me every name under the sun because I didn’t work in the break. The other 10 guys, though, knew they would be doing the same in my position and just got on with it.

“Second on a stage of the Tour. If I had been offered that at the start, I would have taken it with both hands, but after the stage there wasn’t the pleasure that should have been there. I was disappointed.

Stage 15: Irish fans

“There were so many (Irish fans) on the climb to Verbiers on Sunday, it was unbelievable.

“There was one group of guys completely covered in green body paint, with ‘Roche’ written across their chests and the tricolour hanging from their necks. Hopefully I can give them something to shout about.”

Rest day

“The Tour is taking its toll on everyone. Every evening at dinner you can see everyone’s eyes have sunk that little bit further into their head and the hyperactive banter of the first few days is well gone.”

Stage 16: black magic

“I’m so disappointed about yesterday’s stage. I finished fourth, but I think somebody must have put a curse on me for this Tour – some black magic or something.

“The first climb was a bit of a mess. The hors category Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard came after just 16 kilometres of racing and there were large groups all over the place after only a few kilometres of climbing.

“As I started my sprint with 300 metres to go, my chain came off, falling over the big chainring onto my pedal side. I was last man out of the last corner and finished fourth.

“If there had been another 300 metres, I would have got second…”

Stage 18: more time trials and Irish fans

“I started the day 24th overall and even though it made no difference if I dropped to 30th or 40th overall with a slow time, I wanted to test myself over the distance and see exactly how far off the top guys I would be after three weeks of racing.

“The course itself was very undulating and again, the crowds were mental. I’m really surprised at how many Irish fans I’ve seen. Yesterday they almost outnumbered the French, or maybe it just felt like that because they really make their presence felt.

“It’s great to get the support and makes me really proud to be Irish. I saw a guy with a T-shirt saying ‘Roche Rocks’, which is a great play on words as Roche means rock in French.

“I always try and wave, or at least nod or smile at them if I’m suffering too much to take my hands off the bars. Yesterday all I could manage was a half grimace, half smile as I tried to keep my speed up on the four-kilometre climb.”

Stage 20: Mont Ventoux

(The penultimate day, the most dreaded stage, finishing up a steep gradient on the sun-scorched slopes, with an incredible turnout)

“The name Ventoux means ‘windy’ in French, and the climb’s wide-open rock-strewn lunar landscape is battered by gusting winds of around 65mph for much of the year, with the road to the top often closed because of this.

“Everybody knew it was their last chance to change the overall standings and the pace was unbelievable on such a steep gradient.

“I lost contact with the front group and my team-mate Hubert Dupont caught me and helped to pace me until I could no longer keep up. I badly wanted to defend my top-25 position in the overall standings and I used every last ounce of energy to drag myself up the rest of the climb.

“There was a 25 mph head-wind towards the top and my legs were screaming as I tried to keep a steady pace. I eventually crossed the line, shattered, seven minutes behind the stage winner Manuel Garate of Rabobank – I had held onto my 23rd place overall by just 15 seconds.

“I’d like to thank the Irish fans who made the trip to watch the Tour. You can’t imagine the lift I got every time I saw an Irish flag, and there were so many of them on the roadside it was unbelievable.”

Nicolas Roche’s results – General Classifications – 2009 TdF

Stage	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21
Class.	43	8	75	A	44	12	39	105	10	17	44	30	17	2	58	4	41	50	8	49	90