
BBC Sport NI has shared this vintage video of Stephen Roche being interviewed on a trip to Moneymore back in 1982 when he was aged just 23 years.
He was meeting a local chaingang - including Billy Kerr and Joe Barr - for a training ride after doing his piece to camera.
At the time Roche said he believed he could finish in the top 10 in the Tour de France and maybe a top five. He also felt he could win stages in the races but would not say he believed he could win the race.
At the time he said he had had two weeks off after the 1982 season and started back doing weight training in the gym every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning for two hours with running in the afternoons of those days.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays he would "do an hour on the bike" while every Sunday morning he did 90 minutes of running and circuit training; doing about 300 miles per week on the bike.
To put it into perspective, when this video was shot and Roche was 23-years-old he had already been crowned national road race champion five years earlier and had won Paris-Roubaix Espoirs in 1980.
In his first full pro season had also claimed the overall and a stage at Tour de Corse in 1981, beating Bernard Hinault, won Paris-Nice, won the three-stage Tour d'Indre-et-Loire and taken a stage of the Tour de l'Avenir and the overall and two stages in Etoile des Espoirs.
In 1982 - at the end of which this video was shot - Roche had stepped up the standard of races he rode and was 2nd in Amstel Gold and 9th in Liège-Bastogne-Liège (SPP) and was yet to ride a Grand Tour.
In the video below he said he was hoping to win the young rider classification at the Tour the following year, 1983. He would go on to finish 3rd in that classification at the '83 Tour and was 13th overall in the race.
Laurent Fignon and Angel Arroyo were 1st and 2nd overall
in the Tour and 1st and 2nd overall in the young rider classification that
year. Roche was 3rd in the young rider classification followed by Robert Millar
and Pedro Delgado.
Roche’s potential for the Tour was clear from his debut
in 1983; claiming 6th in the prologue and 2nd and 3rd in the TTs in the last week
of the race; denied a mountain TT stage victory on stage 19 by Lucien Van Impe.