Nicolas Roche suffers on the long road during Vuelta stage 3. The heavy hitters of this Vuelta showed their teeth for the first time in the 2017 edition and Roche was among the select group at the finish.
Nicolas Roche rues time lost on Vuelta stage 2
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Nicolas Roche missed out on taking the Vuelta race leader’s jersey today for the second time in his career after losing the game of seconds.
The Irish rider was part of the BMC Racing line-up that won the opening TTT on Saturday.
But yesterday QuickStep split the field late in the crosswinds of stage 2. As a result, Roche was among those riders caught out.
He would lose 13 seconds to the 10 lead riders and five to another group just behind them.
Furthermore, on today’s stage Chris Froome and Davide De La Cruz both took time bonuses for 2nd and 3rd on the stage.
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To compound matters, Froome also took two seconds at an intermediate sprint.
Those bonus seconds proved the difference between Roche missing out on the leader’s jersey or taking it.
As a result he is now 3rd, just two seconds behind new race leader Froome.
“It was pretty tough, exactly like I expected,” Nicolas Roche said of today’s 158.5km stage from Prades Conflent Canigó to Andorra la Vella.
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Nicolas Roche took the climbers' jersey after the TTT but lost it on stage 3 today to Davide Villella of Cannondale-Drapac.
“I know every time the race comes to Andorra there's no easy finish. Today was no different.
"Once again, the race is usually made by the riders. The climbs can be as tough as they are. But it’s actually the racing that makes it hard or not.
“I think today the tempo in the last 50km was pretty high. And there was a lot going on. The team did a very good job from the start.
“Coming in to the finish, we had a few seconds of delay over Froome at the top,” he said of cresting the final climb just behind leaders Froome and Esteban Chaves (Orica-Scott).
“Tejay (Van Garderen) came back to me on the descent. And we rode back,” he added of joining forces with the American and others to catch the leaders.
Roche then tried to go for a flyer once his group caught the leaders well inside the final kilometre. Much as he tried it didn’t work out for him.
Rather, Roche said he was "going nowhere" when he had that final dig.
"After winning the team time trial, I was hoping that today was the day that I could have taken the red jersey," he added.
"I had that in the back of my mind. Yesterday, losing those precious seconds was a big pain for today.”
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