Nicolas Roche chases back on along the seafront in Clontarf, Dublin, yesterday after a late puncture created a bit of panic for him.
One of only two Irish men left in the Giro d’Italia as the race leaves Irish shores for Italy today, Monday, Nicolas Roche has expressed his disappointment at losing 11 seconds in the finale into Merrion Square, Dublin, on yesterday’s third and final stage in Ireland.
The Tinkoff-Saxo man said while he tried very hard to get back close to the head of the bunch after regaining the field following a rear wheel puncture 6km from home, he simply ran out of time to get the job done.
And because of the technical finish as the race weaved its way into the heart of the capital, gaps opened in the field with the Irish man finding himself on the wrong end of a significant 11-second split.
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That occurred when the gap between the 31st and 32nd rider over the line reached one second.
In those cases, the leading 32 riders are credited with the same time as the winner. But those on the wrong side of a split of one second or more are given their own time.
And the deficit between them and the group ahead is not just one second. Instead, the time difference is calculated on the basis of the time that elapses between the leading rider in each group crossing the line.
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So with 11 seconds between winner Marcel Kittel (Giant-Shimano) and the rider in 32nd place – Luke Durbridge, a team mate of race leader Michael Matthews of Orica-GreenEDGE – anyone in the peloton behind Durbridge lost 11 seconds yesterday.
“At this stage, 11 seconds is a lot of time lost and I'm disappointed with that, but most of the other GC riders also got caught out, so it could have been much worse,” Roche said in his diary in the Irish Independent today.
He added that earlier in the stage he drifted back in the bunch to take off his wet outside layer and hand his clothing to the team car when the race was in Drogheda, Co Louth. As he was getting back on, he had the good fortunate to avoid a crash of 20 or so riders who came down ahead of him, including race leader Matthews.
Roche said that riding through some of the towns yesterday brought back great memories for him of his early racing days in Ireland.
“It was a bit strange for me today to be riding the Giro d'Italia into towns where I have raced as a schoolboy or junior rider,” he said.
“I took my first ever win in Dundalk and riding though the town today brought back that memory.”
However, while he and the rest of the field got a good soaking over the past few days, he seemed to enjoy the experience of racing here, saying the welcome and the general atmosphere was much more than he expected.
“The whole peloton is really amazed at the numbers of fans on the road here and every town we went into today had a really festive atmosphere”, he said.
Roche added that being based abroad meant it was difficult to gauge pre-race what the level of interest in the Giro and cycling generally would be in those areas the event visited over the past three days.
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