Nicolas Roche up the road at the Tour de France. He said he dug very deep.
Nicolas Roche on the attack at Tour de France
Nicolas Roche has said he “dug really deep” to keep himself in contention for victory at the Tour de France yesterday.
Ultimately he just came up short; Lilian Calmejane (Direct Energie) going clear on the final climb and Roche just unable to get onto him.
The Irish rider would then be caught by the remains of the breakaway he had attacked from. And he would eventually finish 4th.
It was a strange stage on which a ‘breakaway’ of about 50 riders found itself off the front. Roche would go clear in an eight-man move from it.
And it was that small leading group that Calmejane would attack from. Roche had ridden a great race to bridge to the large group as he was not one of the first to pull clear.
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“At some stage I had to stop thinking I was in the Tour and there was still two weeks to go,” said Roche of his attacking day.
“And I was saying ‘right, whatever happens today happens and we’ll think about tomorrow tonight’.
“But, yeah, I went really deep. Once I was up in that group there was two possibilities.
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“One; I really, really wanted to make it to the top in case Richie was isolated in the chasing group. And two; in the case we’d arrive, to give it a go.
“It was to everyone’s benefit for me to be up in the front coming into the last 10k. So I really gave it everything.”
However, while he found himself going for the stage, the initial intentions of the team were different.
“The plan was to try and get Greg Van Avermaet in the breakaway, hoping that it would be less of a climbers’ group and he could play his card in the finish,” said Roche.
“The race went bananas and there was a group of 45 riders so we had to have numbers there as we didn’t want to get caught like we did in the Critérium du Dauphiné.
“We learned there that it is easier to have riders drop back than try and bridge across. So we tried to ride aggressively and keep the race going.”
At the Dauphiné BMC Racing’s team leader and yellow jersey Richie Porte found himself without team mates on the final stage and lost the race.
In the end yesterday Porte finished safely in the yellow jersey group some 50 seconds behind the stage winner. That group would catch Roche, and the others he was with, just before the finish.
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