Two weeks into the Giro d’Italia and Nicolas Roche says he is recovering well and determined to get behind Romain Bardet, who has relaunched his career as a general classification contender on this race.
Roche’s Team DSM lost Jai Hindley to a persistent and worsening
saddle sore last week; an unfortunate development for the Australian, and for
the team, as he was 2nd in the Giro last year.
Roche went into this race having put aside any ambition to aim for his own general classification result as he knew the team was fully behind Bardet and Hindley.
He also told stickybottle on the eve of the race just over two weeks ago that his previous performances in the Giro had not been what he’d hoped for. And so he wanted to go back this time and do a good Italian Grand Tour; something he feels he is achieving.
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“In terms of the work I’m doing here for the team, I think I’m working really well and that Romain is happy with the work I’ve been doing,” he said. "If I had the chance to get in the breakaway and maybe get a result for myself, that would be the icing on the cake.
"I think that maybe I’ve been climbing better in some other years, compared to this Giro. But I’m a lot more powerful on those rolling stages now, where there is also a lot of work to be done."
Roche continued: “I think the final week is going to be very hard. The weather is also going to be a factor; it’s not supposed to get that much better. Romain seems to be enjoying the wet conditions. He’s 7th but he’s still close to that podium and anything is possible.”
Monday’s stage 16 was a shortened, though still epic,
race from Sacile to Cortina d'Ampezzo. And Roche was on the
attack early. He got clear in a large breakaway group – which also included Dan
Martin (Israel Start-Up Nation) – on the first climb of the day, the 11.6km
La Crosetta.
However, when descending the climb Roche and his fellow
escapees got a very clear taste of what was to come – and the conditions that
had grounded the TV helicopters for the day – when they hit mist like pea soup.
However, Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo) still split the group in those
conditions going down the climb.
“Nibali put the pressure on during the downhill and, one, I couldn’t even see the front of the group (due to the mist) and, two, we got no information until we got to the bottom,” Roche said.
Once he got to the bottom of the descent and hit flatter
road he could see a group of six about 30 seconds ahead “and that was it really”.
However, he believed the group splitting was not deliberate and arose mostly
due to the racing conditions rather than any attack.
Once the first group found they had a gap, Roche believed
the leaders started working well together. He explained a lot of riders in his
group were team mates of those ahead, which killed the cooperation in his
group.
“Knowing there was going to be 60 to 70k of valley road,
we probably weren’t expecting a group of six to go there,” he said.
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Roche and those he was with were stuck in no man’s land for a while before being caught by the remains of the peloton. When EF Education Nippo started ramping up the pressure with about 50km to go, the remains of the bunch split even more.
Roche got into a group and focused on riding to the finish, having ensured Bardet was where he needed to be for the finale, with the final climb of Passo Giau just up the road.
Roche said by the time he got to the top of Passo Giau he had been “completely soaked for four hours” and though it “wasn’t the coldest racing conditions ever, it was very cold”.
His group did not have to consider the time cut, as they were far ahead of the back of the race. And so Roche and other riders decided to stop at the top of Passo Giau to change jackets and gloves in a bid to stay warm descending into the finish.
When he was changing clothes atop the Passo Giau, one of his team staff told him Bardet was 2nd man on the road, with Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious) chasing Bernal. Roche explained Bardet was happy the conditions were so bad because there was a descent to the finish.
And when the decisions were being made early in the day
about the stage being shortened, the main consideration for Team DSM was that
the descent would not be taken out as Bardet had picked it out as a finale
where he could gain time.
“He was always going to go for it there and make a difference and take some risks,” Roche said.
The Irishman added his team was ready for the longer stage and it simply changed its plan when the course was altered. He also felt the stage was still extremely hard, as evidenced by so many riders finishing in ones and twos.
“There’s a moment when you have to make that call (about
taking out climbs) and if it’s snowing, then it’s snowing. And, yes, they can show
photos of back in the 50s and back in the 80s and the riders crossing walls of
snow. But those were times when the Giro was won by an hour, not by seconds.
And the racing yesterday was great anyway… the racing was just so intense.
“It was still five hours racing, with 3-4,000 metres of
climbing. It was a bloody brutal stage, one of the hardest stages of the Giro
so far. The Passo Giau is brutal; the racing, the weather, the climb before it… The start was also nuts. It was a rough day.”
On the issue of Bardet; when Roche was asked if it was going too far to say the Frenchman had relaunched his career as a general classification rider over the past fortnight, he laughed: “No, no, that’s not going too far, that’s the plan. The Giro was never going to be played out in the prologue in Turin, it’s played out in the third week.
“So Romain, and the team’s experts, have put the plans in
place for him to be in shape in the third week. And it’s all coming to pass. I
think sometimes people make premature judgements, maybe because Romain lost 10
seconds to Landa in the prologue, or Formolo had a better TT… You know, you’re
not out of shape because you lose eight seconds to Bernal in a prologue. This
is the Giro, there’s 45,000 metres of climbing…
“As a team we’ve always believed in Romain. And you can
see that in how committed we are to him day by day; riding in the front,
putting him in position like he was leading the Giro. So our team has invested
a lot of time and energy in him, and we believe in him.
“And our plan is for everything to come into place in the
third week. And it seems like it’s working that way. So we’re happy so far and
we’re ready for that third week.”
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