Nicolas Roche and his Team Sunweb management planned for him to sit up in the Tour stage 5 finale yesterday to deliberately lose time so he could go in a breakaway later.
It is a plan that has instantly worked as, at the time of writing, he had made the breakaway on today’s stage 6.
The Irishman said he needed to be down on the general
classification before he would be given leeway to get up the road.
That tactic is more important than ever this year as
breakaways look like they will be slightly more tightly controlled as the race
may be stopped if Covid19 infection numbers were to shoot up in France.
With that threat hanging over the race, the general
classification favourites cannot assume they will have a full three weeks of
racing to peg back any time lost to a good climber who makes it all the way in
a breakaway.
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Roche said his team came to him and advised him to lose
time yesterday. And though he said doing so was against his nature, when the
speed ramped up towards the finish yesterday he let the group go.
“Over the years I’ve burned my candle at both ends trying to maintain a decent overall position on the Tour while also trying to go for a stage win,” Nicolas Roche wrote in his Irish Independent Tour Diary.
“Sitting up after my work is done for my team leader is
different to sitting up and trying to save energy for the rest of the race –
and it’s something that is against my nature really,” he added, explaining he
was even joking about that with his management yesterday morning.
“Realistically, I’ve been 12th and 14th overall in the
Tour and it hasn’t changed my life. Winning a stage would be fantastic but it’s
not easy. I’ve been in maybe 40 breakaways in 10 Tours and the closest I have
come is three second places.”
However, having deliberately lost just over seven minutes yesterday, at the time of writing on Thursday he was in the breakaway, some six minutes up the road.
That group had to work hard to get its gap, riding the first hour of racing in 51.4km per hour. The group is made up of: Nicolas Roche (Sunweb), Neilson Powless (EF Pro Cycling), Edvald Boasson Hagen (NTT), Daniel Oss (Bora-hansgrohe), Rémi Cavagna (Deceuninck-Quick Step), Greg Van Avermaet (CCC), Jesus Herrada (Cofidis) and Alexey Lutsenko (Astana).
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