Nicolas Roche put in a very strong ride at the Giro in the highest mountains and looks to be coming out of this Giro in really good shape (Photo: Sirotti)
Nicolas Roche took a tumble on yesterday’s mountain stage of the Giro d’Italia but remounted to taken a very strong 9th place on the day.
His ride, a stage when Vincenzo Nibali of Astana won the day and Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) took over the race lead, bodes well for his condition coming out of this race.
There was bad news, however, for the only other Irishman in the race Philip Deignan; a team mate of Roche’s at Team Sky.
He abandoned the race during yesterday’s stage 19, with just two more stages remaining. It was unclear at the time of writing why he had pulled out.
The mountain stage took the riders 244km from Pinerolo to Risoul, and included the highest point of this year’s race at Colle d'Angelo.
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Roche infiltrated the main breakaway of the day, though having been very active for the 75km of the stage before that move stuck he had burnt a lot of matches by the time he pulled clear.
And while he would lose contact climbing the Colle d'Angelo and crash coming down it, he picked himself up and caught this ahead of him.
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He said in his Irish Independent Diary of his crash: "With the group just hovering in front of me halfway down though, my front wheel suddenly slid out from under me on a corner and I hit the deck hard, ending up sprawled out on the road right in front of one of the ten ambulances the race organisers had parked on the roadside in expectation of crashes.
"The crew ran over to see how I was but having landed on my ribs, I felt as if I'd just been sucker-punched and lay there winded for a few seconds before hauling myself up and continuing the descent, albeit at a less hectic pace this time."
Nibali and Chavez had attacked what remained of the peloton behind and caught all of those ahead, going through them on the last climb of the day - 12km cat 1 up to Risoul – and taking 1st and 2nd on the stage.
Roche paced himself well and came home in 9th place after a very testing stage where crashes were the order of the day for many people.
Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) lost his maglia rosa after crashing on the same descent as Roche and then cracking.
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