Dan Martin (left) and Nicolas Roche training on the Worlds course in Florence today. Roche has told stickybottle he believes all four riders on the Irish team for the elite men's road race on Sunday are going well and he feels they can get something from the title decider (Photo: Sean Rowe)
In his continued quest for improvement in the race against the clock, Nicolas Roche opted to ride his first ever elite men’s individual time trial at the World Championships yesterday, Wednesday, and having finished 13th in Florence he was happy with the result afterwards.
“It was the longest time trial I’ve done so far,” said Roche today.
“So I tried to pace myself by not going too mad at the start and allowing myself get over the first little drag before settling into a good rhythm. I didn’t want to blow up near the end and then lose loads of time in the last 15 minutes or so.”
Advertisement
Using a 58 tooth front chainring with a Zipp rear disc wheel and an 808 deep section rim on the front, Roche’s only equipment worries came about when his Saxo-Tinkoff team issue aero helmet broke before the start.
“The little plastic circular ratchet to tighten the helmet at the back broke before the start which meant it wouldn’t close properly onto the back of my head so we had to sellotape it.”
“It worked for a while but then it slipped down a few times during the race. But I can’t say that slowed me down. I think it was a pretty good time trial for me and to get 13th was around about where I hoped to finish.”
“The only way I will improve my time trials is to keep doing them, keep practicing them, so it was great for that. Having Bjarne (Riis) and one of the (Saxo-Tinkoff) team mechanics in the Irish car behind me meant that they could see what I was doing wrong, or doing right. And we can hopefully build on that and improve a little bit again over the winter for next year.”
Next up for Roche is the elite men’s road race on Sunday, where he will ride alongside cousin Dan Martin, recent Tour of Britain stage winner Sam Bennett and national road race champion Matt Brammeier.
“I think the usual names will be there when it comes to the finish, Valverde, Cancellara, Gilbert, even Sagan might surprise a few people. But we have a strong Irish team here. All four of us seem to be on form at the moment and have all won races recently so we’re going into the race with ambitions to do well.”
Related News
Sunday 29th September:
Elite Men Road Race 272.26km
The race will take the riders 106.6km from Lucca into Florence and once in Florence they will then negotiate 10 laps of a 16.6km course with a tough climb each lap.
Sam Bennett
Matt Brammeier
Daniel Martin
Nicolas Roche
Here’s the profile of the elite men’s course:
Here’s a detailed look at the climbs on the course
Climb 1:
Climb 2:
Topics
