Ireland's Nicolas Roche is not panicking about the time he has lost at the Vuelta. He says he can ride himself into the race if he gets fighting (Photo: BMC Racing - Chris Auld)
Nicolas Roche vows to keep fighting at Vuelta
Nicolas Roche has finished in the main bunch on stage 5 of the Vuelta today, as has Ireland's other rider in the race Dan Martin.
However, Roche's hopes of doing a good ride in the general classification took a blow yesterday.
He would come home almost two minutes down on most of the general classification riders after 161.4km into Alfacar Sierra de la Alfaguara.
“I’m not surprised with how tough this Vuelta has been so far,” BMC Racing’s Roche said of losing that time.
“The speed has been really high and what I’m missing at this point in the race is race days.
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“So it was really important that I didn’t give up and that I kept fighting to the line. I am convinced that losing a minute or two (yesterday) is not the end of the world.
“I think day by day that I will be able to come back and keep fighting,” he said, adding some general classification orders also had a rough day yesterday.
“I didn’t really have a bad day actually as I’m just getting back to race form. It was a lot hotter than the previous days.
“And more than the heat; the wind was like a blow dryer. And with that I think the temperature was closer to 40 degrees.”
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Clarke wins the stage. The top three press on out front of the large main breakaway today.
On today’s stage – some 188.7km from Granada to Roquetas de Mar – Simon Clarke (EF Education First-Drapac) won the day.
He survived out front from a large breakaway, beating Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) and Roche’s team mate Alessandro de Marchi in a sprint at the finish.
The reduced peloton finished 4:55 down, with 19 men ahead of them. Roche and Martin were in that bunch, which numbered just 93 riders.
Rudy Molard (Groupama–FDJ) was in the escape and takes over the race lead after finishing 6th just eight seconds down.
Nicolas Roche is now 24th some 3:43 down, but more than two minutes off most of the general classification big guns.
Daniel Martin (UAE Team Emirates) is down in 75th place, some 17:51 down. He is in a great position now to be given leeway to go on the attack later in the race.
His team had said from the outset he was in the race for stages, with Fabio Aru its general classification man. Aru is 16th overall some 1:48 down on Molard.
The new race leader enjoys an advantage of 1:01 over the man he took the leader’s red jersey from; Michal Kwiatkowski (Team Sky), who is now 2nd overall.
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