By Conor Verbruggen
Unlike many top riders of his generation, Nicholas Roche’s exit from pro cycling was not a slow and steady decline towards the inevitable. Roche (38) left the peloton last year, when his Team DSM contract was not extended, rather than taking offers from lower-level teams. Last weekend he returned to top tier cycling with a debut in the Gravel World Championships, which also offered a sneak preview at the new gravel team he is creating, and now looking for riders to join.
“It grew by itself,” Roche said of his new team, which had something of a soft launch at the inaugural Worlds in Veneto last weekend.
The team, as yet unnamed, currently consists of just Roche and his brother Alexis and is backed by bike sponsor Bianchi. However, at least two more riders will be added. Roche is considering that next move of adding to the roster and is also eager to hear from prospective riders and sponsors.
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“We want to add two more riders to the team, one man and one woman,” he confirmed. Roche is also currently putting in place sponsors so the team can be financially self-sufficient as it travels around the world to race - as far away as Australia and with a schedule that includes the biggest gravel races on the calendar.
It will be a competitive outfit for Roche, but with big wins or UCI points not the central focus. That is perhaps a good thing as Roche said the standard last weekend was “super high” and nearly at the level of WorldTour road racing.
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These days Roche is earning a living - still in the bike game, just not in the bunch - all over the world. He has a commercial relationship with Bianchi, is the star turn at corporate events and is also commentating on pro road racing in TV, including at the Tour this year. He also owns stakes in a number of businesses.
As a result, his time on the bike is limited to "about 12 hours" per week. And though he had no previous off-road experience until he began riding gravel races in recent months, he is now creating a gravel team.
Roche plans to start a YouTube channel to document the team’s experiences and provide a platform for sponsor value.
"What people want to see is how you got there or how you didn’t get there," he says of cycling media that offer an alternative to written reports and results.
Niche as it may sound, the gravel video market is competitive, with production value rising massively in recent years, driven on by accounts like Rapha, Payson McElveen, Jack 'Ultracyclist' Thompson and Gus Morton.
The Roche brothers’ gravel team will race the Belgian Waffle Ride in Kansas tomorrow followed by Big Sugar Gravel in Arkansas on October 22nd.
Roche sees this expansion of the line-up as crucial so “the team can still be represented” at races when his work commitments “for example at the Tour” mean he will not be available.
