Stephen Roche has said all of his memorabilia from his glorious 1987 season - when he won the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and World Championships - has been lost, though he believes it was last seen in Mallorca.
The jerseys and bikes from his career highlights were on the same site as his cycling holiday business that ran into financial problems, and then collapsed.
That corporate collapse - with hundreds of thousands of Euro in dispute, and still owed, Roche explains - was followed by a protracted legal action by people who were owed money.
And in the fall-out, Roche has now revealed he never retrieved the memorabilia, saying it was locked up where he was unable to get it. He has now effectively lost it, though is hopeful of one day getting it back if he could financially recover.
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“Well, a lot of it is still in Spain, locked up in Palma. One of the hotels where I was working confiscated it, which wasn’t very nice, and now no one can find it," he told journalist Ian O'Riordan in an interview in The Irish Times today.
“But I’m not looking for any sympathy. I still love the work, sharing the passion of cycling, still get a kick out of it. So there’s another chapter yet. There’s still a lot of stuff there that I couldn’t tell for the moment. To maintain credibility, and also some of my dignity as well.
“There are things I’ve done the last few years that I’m not proud of, there were certain situations I tried to manage as best I could, and now I can say they were the wrong decisions. But I can’t undo them.”
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Roche had run a cycling holiday business for 20 years in Mallorca. His company, Shamrock Events, ran in to problems in 2018 and collapsed. Two of the hotels he had used took a legal action claiming they were owed almost €400,000.
Roche was ordered to repay €750,000 over the bankruptcy of his company. He was banned from acting as a company director for seven years in Spain. However, an appeal saw that reduced to two years and the sum he was ordered to pay was reduced to €400,000.
He added was still hoping to one day go back to Palma and "put a cheque on the table, but say I’m only willing to give you the cheque if you return my memorabilia”.
He also says he ran into other issues when a plot of land he had invested in could not get planning permission. Another venture, in a luxury car sales business in France, ran into problems when four vehicles were stolen.
The insurance company would not pay out because the doors of the premises did not comply with specific security standards.
He also lost a €50,000 deposit he had paid on a unit in Palma and a villa in the south of France worth over €1 million when the banks pulled the plug on a loan after his business issues in Palma came to light.
However, he is continuing to work and said he was determined to get back on track financially and has also remarried. He is running cycling tours in the south of France, with three planned for next year, while also working for a property developer and doing some corporate gigs.
