Nicolas Roche has said he feels he can recover well in the week between the end of the Tour de France and the Olympic road race, and insists he wants to have a real impact on the race in London.
He added that while he was “overwhelmed” by the Olympic experience in Beijing four years ago, he believes he will be less so this time around, saying Ireland should have a strong team at the Games.
“This time around I think I will be more focused,” Roche said in an interview in today’s Irish Independent.
“With the Tour de France ending so close to the Games, I won’t be able to get Olympic fever until a few days before the race. I want to have an impact on the race. I don’t think I’ll be going up the road in an early suicide breakaway but nearer the end I wouldn’t mind having a go. I don’t want to just go to make up the numbers.”
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“Beijing was a really hard course. I was maybe a bit overwhelmed by the whole Olympic thing. I remember attacking on the second last lap and paying the price on the last lap. The smog and the heat made it pretty tough too. I thought it would be a party atmosphere in the village. Well, maybe not a party, but I thought it would be fun staying there. I think the atmosphere was a bit tense when we were there because the first event hadn’t started yet. When we got there, the village was half empty and anyone that was there was concentrating on their respective sport, as you would expect.”
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Roche said while it would be hard to switch from the Tour de France mindset and rhythm to the Olympic road race just six days later, he would most likely return home for a few days to get in the right frame of mind.
“It will be a fine line between training hard and recovering enough in time for the race but I normally ride the San Sebastian Classic the Sunday after the Tour anyway and I’ve done pretty well in that the past two years. Very few of the top guys, if any, have opted not to ride the Tour to focus on the Olympics though, so everybody will be in the same boat.”
He believed while Mark Cavendish would be hard to beat, many teams would be trying to disrupt Team GB’s race plan and that this may leave the way clear for riders like Matt Goss or Thor Hushovd to take the title.
On his father’s ride in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow he said:
“We never really talked much about his ride at the Olympics in 1980. All I know is that he was sick going into the race and never had the legs to do anything. I don’t think he was too worried about it though because he was offered a professional contract when he came back from Moscow.”
The in-depth interview with Roche is in today’s ‘Lineout’ magazine in The Irish Independent. The piece is written by Gerard Cromwell and is spread over three pages, with some great photos; all in all well, worth getting your hands on.
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