Stephen Roche has staunchly defended son Nicolas's Tour de France team time trial ride, saying those looking to blame a rider for losing the stage needed to look elsewhere.
By Brian Canty
Ireland’s only Tour de France winner, Stephen Roche, has defended his son Nicolas against any suggestion he was at fault for Team Sky missing out on a stage win at the Tour de France in the team time trial.
The squad was beaten by just six tenths of a second by BMC Racing after Roche junior struggled in the closing metres and the team was force to reduce their pace very slightly.
However, data later emerged showing how much Roche had pushed himself for the team during stage 9 test; 28km from Vannes to Plumelec.
Roche hit the highest speed of any rider in the field; reaching 78.37kph at the 16.5km point of the race.
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Roche Snr was also critical of those who blamed his son for Team Sky not winning on the day.
“There were nine men started off and only five finished,” he told stickybottle.
“If you really want to point a finger then point it at Geraint Thomas.
“It’s a team effort; the riders have their jobs but Geraint Thomas put in an incredibly hard effort with 1.5 kilometres to go.
“Nicolas was on his wheel, Geraint opened a gap. Nicolas needed to close that gap, do his relay and then Chris Froome comes around him.
“So anyone that knows anything about cycling or has been in a team time-trial knows what it’s like.
“It was an impossible task. He’d ridden flat out for 27 kilometres so it’s very hard to go hard on him.
“I think he was a credit to himself because of how he hung on for so long.
“Four got dropped before him? People are forgetting that. He struggled on camera for the last 100 yards but it’s not for Nicolas to take the blame.
“He did some incredible riding before that and he wasn’t expecting Geraint to go as hard as he did.
Team Sky hurtle towards Plumelec on stage 9. The final climb to the finish line would prove their undoing when their formation fractured at the very end of the 28km stage.
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“(Geraint) wanted to do one last do-or-die effort and strung everybody out.
“But accelerating like he did put Nicolas in trouble, it was very hard for him to recover from that effort in such a short space of time.
“It was a team effort and they lost by half a second. End of story.”
Roche junior was diplomatic after the stage the weekend before last and even apologised. But he pointed out he had ridden flat out in the second half of the stage, when four of the nine riders peeled off.
“I was pretty generous again in the second half of the course,” Roche told the media afterwards.
“It’s true that (Geraint Thomas) was really strong and that took me out of my comfort zone. I don’t have any words to explain my disappointment.”
Thomas also spoke out after just missing victory; with Team Sky some five seconds ahead of BMC starting the climb of just over 1km to the finish.
“I’m annoyed we didn’t win. We should have won that,” he said, though at no time did he single out anyone on the team for criticism.
“Fair play to BMC they did a good ride but it’s disappointing. It’s been a tough week… but we really wanted that.”
Froome was clear to mention Roche in his post race comments, and was quick to spring to his defence.
“At 0.6 seconds, you can’t really cut it too finely there to say where we messed up,” he said.
“The guys gave it everything; everyone was really motivated for this team time trial.
“In the final we saw Nico Roche struggling a little bit up that final climb but that’s the nature of the team time trial.
“He gave so much earlier on, you definitely can’t put it down to him struggling on the final climb. We gave it everything and BMC were just better than us.”
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