Roche failed to spark in today’s final TT of the Tour de France but is back to his best
Nicolas Roche has put in a disappointing ride in the TT on today’s penultimate stage of the Tour de France that has seen him fall short of his pre-race goal of a top ten on the final general classification in Paris tomorrow, Sunday.
However, after a very testing season last year during which injury and bad crashes were sent to test him, the Ag2r man has definitely shown he is back on top with a really battling ride in this year’s Tour.
His cousin Dan Martin will perhaps be disappointed he was unable to come closer to a stage win in the mountains.
However, like Roche he has shown his true class on the roads of France in the past three weeks and both have won huge admiration for the guts they have shown, especially on the climbs of the past week.
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Today, Roche needed to pull a big ride out of the bag to get into the top ten on GC.
He started the day just shy of that; in 11th slot some 12:54 down in leader Bradley Wiggins.
Roche was just 1:08 down on 10th placed Thibaut Pinot (FDJ-Big Mat) and he was 1:11 up on Andreas Kloden (RadioShack-Nissan) in 12th.
Roche well beat Pinot in the race’s first TT, putting 2:04 into him over 41.5km on stage nine. It was expected that he would beat Pinot again in today’s 53.5km test into Chartres and leapfrog over him in the general classification.
The received wisdom was it would then be a case of needing the TT of his life to hold off Kloden and so get into the top ten.
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However, the TT went very much against Roche. He had been 23rd in the first TT on stage 9 but today he was way off the pace; 77th some 6:39 down.
Pinot faired much better, coming home in 41st place and beating Roche by 1:08 and holding onto his 10th spot overall. Kloden then put 2:50 into Roche, coming home in 19th place today and easily jumping over the Irishman in the overall standings into 11th.
Roche is now 12th overall, 19:33 down.
Daniel Martin enjoyed a very respectable ride today in a discipline that is not the best part of his game. The Garmin-Sharp climber was a very decent 32nd, some 4:41 down on Wiggins. Martin is now 35th on GC.
Roche will be disappointed with his ride today, but both he and Martin have ridden out of their skins during some of the hardest stages, especially during the past week in the Pyrenees.
Wiggins meanwhile now has the Tour wrapped up, winning today’s TT to extend his lead over team mate Chris Froome to 3:21 with Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas Cannondale) a distant third at 6:19.
Martin rode superbly on the very tough stage 16 – he’ll be back even stronger
Wiggins lets out a victory roar at the TT finish today; the Tour de France is in the bag for the Briton
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