Nicolas Roche is going into the Tour de France with no team leader to protect. He is hoping to get up the road.
Nicolas Roche has said he still feels young and during this Tour de France he wants to have a go and show he still has with it takes.
The three-time Grand Tour stage winner and former Vuelta race leader is now aged 35 years and is one of the most experienced riders in the pro game.
He is competing in a sport at a time when riders regularly keep racing until they are aged 40 years or close to it.
Roche remains at WorldTour level and continues to be selected for the biggest races.
And he says after a testing time in his life, with his brother Florian having been very ill, he was hoping to show himself in the three weeks ahead.
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With his intended Team Sunweb leader Tom Dumoulin out of
the picture injured, Roche goes into this race with a freer hand.
"This time it's a bit of a no man's land for me. I
need to save energy on some days in order to go deeper on others," he said
of measuring his effort to aim for a stage win rather than the overall.
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And he says he may even look at losing time deliberately
early on so he gets leeway to go in a breakaway.
"I'm a bit worried," he joked. "I've never
had it in the back of my mind to be setting out to lose time.
"On the first mountain stages, it was always about
fighting for position or fighting to help someone else's position, and then
maybe you lose some time, too.
"But at the end of the day, many times I've been in
the position of going for breakaways. It's just with different fatigue or
stress.
"I've really built the season gradually to be in
good shape now. It was good to finally go and give it a try for myself, and
nice to prove that I still have it."
He added in his Irish Independent Tour Diary: “Results-wise, it's been a quiet enough start to the season for me so far, but I feel the team have really trusted me to be ready for this Tour.
“At the Tour of Romandie, I felt some semblance of form
coming back. At the Tour de Suisse I had great support from the team and
finished tenth overall.
“In between, we spent two and a half weeks in Tenerife,
living at altitude, climbing Spain's highest mountain, Mount Teide, every day
and I feel like I've a good foundation under me now.
“After Switzerland it took me a few days to recover, but
I went to Livigno for some more altitude training and to get away from the
extreme heat in Monaco and the traffic.
“Even though I was training every day, it felt like a
mini-holiday and was very good for the head.”
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