Nicolas Roche is settling into life at Team Sky with the squad very well poised going into the final stages of his debut race, the Vuelta A Andalucia Ruta Del Sol. Though he’s over 11 minutes down overall his job is to protect the interests of team leader Chris Froome, who lies second overall.
By Brian Canty
Nicolas Roche is getting used to life in Team Sky after playing a solid team role in yesterday and today's second and third stages of the Vuelta A Andalucia Ruta Ciclista Del Sol.
Yesterday, the Irishman crossed the line in 83rd place over two and a half minutes behind stage winner Juan Jose Lobato (Movistar) but it was never his intention to chase individual glory on the 194-kilometre stage from Utrera to Ucena.
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His efforts in pacing established GC riders Chris Froome and Pete Kennaugh over the final climb saw both those two finish in the reduced front group that sprinted for the win and they, alongside Kanstantsin Siutsou and Mikel Nieve moved up to 3rd and 5th, respectively, with the latter duo 9th and 10th.
It gave the team plenty cards to play in today’s stage from Motril to Alto de Hazallanas.
And this afternoon, Chris Froome moved up to second overall after an exciting climbing battle with stage winner and race leader Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo).
Team Sky's other big GC men, Mikel Nieve is 6th (at 2:30) with Kennaugh in 5th at 2:28.
Roche crossed the line over four minutes down on his former teammate Contador today but will be unconcerned by that, particularly after his high-speed crash on Wednesday which left him feeling stiff and sore.
Tomorrow sees the riders tackle another hilly stage, starting Maracena and finishing on the category one climb of Alto de Allanadas.
Elsewhere, Dan Martin continued his preparations for the upcoming Tirreno-Adriatico (11th-17th March) with a solid showing in the one-day (1.HC-ranked) Trofeo Laigueglia in Italy yesterday.
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The Garmin-Cannondale man was his team’s protected rider and he was one of just 24 riders who contested the finish, though he had to be content with 21st.
“It was a beautiful race, totally built for me with all the climbing,” he said afterwards.
“Well, until two kilometres to go. It was the weirdest finish to a race I've seen in a while with a big road going downhill at a gradient of 8-9%!
“At 400m to go it was still that, though it flattened out with around 300m to go. Still, I just decided to stay out of the way.”
Martin said he is “surprised” about where he is in terms of his form at present as he’s been unable to string together much consistency because of illness of late.
“I haven’t been able to do as much as I wanted to over the last number of weeks because I’ve been getting sick so I'm really happy where I am, all things considered,” he said.
The 191-kilometre race featured four categorised climbs and almost 3,000 metres of climbing with Davide Cimolai (Lampre-Merida) emerging victorious ahead of Francesco Gavazzi (Southeast) and Alexey Tsatevich (Katusha).
Dan Martin has been sick lately and not been able to do the training he'd like but his form yesterday showed he's not far off the mark.
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