Stephen Roche says he did not see the things in the pro peloton that Paul Kimmage saw and wrote about after he stopped cycling
By Brian Canty
Former Tour de France winner Stephen Roche has said he hopes he and Paul Kimmage can one day make peace.
Roche, one of just two riders to win the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and the World Championships in the same year has long been at odds with his former Irish teammate over comments he made about Kimmage’s seminal book ‘Rough Ride’.
The book was released in 1990 and was met with much opposition, with Roche one of those railing against it. Roche has apologised many times for his less than flattering comments about the book since then, but he said those words seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
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“Paul probably has a chip on his shoulder against me because I shot his book down but I was a young guy then and I shot from the hip and since then I’ve apologised,” said Roche.
“I’ve said ‘Paul, I didn’t know it was going on, you’re riding in the back of the peloton, you can see what’s going on ahead of you, I’m riding in the front with no wing mirrors I don’t know what’s going on in the middle’. And I apologised to him for maybe being harsh, criticizing him, criticizing his book because when he brought the book out he was revealing a lot of stuff.”
“I thought, at the time, well you’re spitting in the soup but in hindsight I said, what he did was brave, and if someone had listened to him back in 1994 (the book was published in 1990, just after Kimmage stopped racing - Ed) maybe the 20 year struggle with doping in cycling could have only been a 10-year struggle.”
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“But when Paul’s book came out, we all said this is a small guy with a chip on his shoulder, he wants to be heard. We all basically shunned him and basically made him a no-go zone. But Paul just won’t accept my apology.”
“I don’t know whether he feels if he accepts my apology he can’t go on anymore because I was very sincere when I said it to him. And I’ve said it publicly to him since then as well but Paul still keeps going on,” added Roche.
Roche also said that Kimmage must remember the good that cycling brought him and called on the former Sunday Times journalist to be balanced.
“Tell all the bad stuff, but keep it balanced,” said Roche.
“But don’t forget to tell people how good cycling has been to you; all those years we spent hostelling together in our early teens, they were fabulous days for us.”
“If cycling wasn’t there for us we could have been out on street corners, drinking, smoking, we might not be the people we are today. So you cannot say cycling is a bad place. People have to educate their kids, cycling is a great sport.”
“Don’t be telling (parents) not to put your kids in cycling because it’s riddled with drugs. That was my problem with Paul. I said, ‘Write what you want. You’re a journalist, you interpret what you see and that’s why you’re a good journalist but don’t forget the other side. Don’t forget what you’ve got from cycling’.”
Roche was speaking this morning in an interview with George Lee on RTE Radio 1.
