On the move: Roche battles the mountains during stage 16 of this year’s Tour de France
Ireland’s Nicolas Roche has confirmed he is leaving Ag2r La Mondiale at the end of the current season in favour of a move to Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank.
The Irishman, who captured his best ever result in the Tour de France last month with 12th overall, has penned a new two-year contract with the team owned and managed by 1996 Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis.
The move was anticipated and had been covered by stickybottle and other cycling media in recent weeks.
While Roche has been the team leader of his Ag2r squad in recent years in many big races including the Tour de France, in his new role he will be riding for Alberto Contador at the Tour.
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However, writing in his Irish Independent diary today, Roche said he still believed he would get a shot at leading his new team.
"I don’t think Contador will be riding all three Grand Tours so that may see me ride one of the other two, the Giro d’Italia or Vuelta a Espana as team leader. If not, I’m sure I will get my chance in other races."
He believed not being leader at the Tour may present him with chances to target a stage win “or at the very least, will teach me how to defend a yellow jersey at the world’s biggest bike race”.
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Roche revealed that he had been in talks with the team for a number of months following a chance meeting with former Australian professional Nick Gates, whom he met one day out training. He said Gates had just begun working as a director with Saxo-Tinkoff and suggested he should talk to Riis about joining the team for 2013 and beyond.
“We swapped numbers and shortly after that I found myself speaking with Riis on the phone,” he writes in today’s Independent.
“Riis is known as a really good motivator and those few minutes that we spent talking about the possibility of me joining his team almost gave me goosebumps.”
He added that with the extra backing recently secured from the Russian Tinkoff Bank, Riis wanted to once again have the strongest team in the world next year and told Roche he fitted into those plans.
“For years, my dad has been telling anyone prepared to listen that I needed a strong, charismatic directeur sportif who can take me in hand and has the knowledge and years of experience to help me progress, so it’s hardly surprising to hear that he thinks I have made a good decision in joining the Danish squad.”
To his credit, Roche does not shy away from the drugs controversy hanging over the team; whose star Contador is currently banned for doping.
He writes: “I know some people will immediately question my choice of teams, given the fact that team leader Alberto Contador is currently banned from competition for a doping violation and Riis himself has admitted doping in the past.”
“While the sport’s governing body and various anti-doping bodies are doing more and more to clean up cycling and the holes in the net are closing up, it’s hard to name any professional team without doping links to the past, whether it’s with a member of staff or a rider.”
The team has already said they want him to do some tests on the track over the winter in a bid to help improve his time trial riding. He also revealed that Ag2r had offered him another contract for next year as team leader and when he told them he was leaving they accepted his decision graciously and wished him luck.
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