Roche shows the strain of the punishing gradients on today's 14th stage of the Vuelta A Espana.
By Brian Canty
Nicolas Roche dropped one place to 17th overall following the longest stage of the Vuelta A Espana on Saturday.
The Team Sky man was 38th across the line, just over five minutes down on stage winner Alessandro De Marchi of BMC Racing Team.
The Irishman is now 11:10 down on Fabio Aru (Astana) who retained the race leader’s red jersey.
Roche will ride for teammate Mikel Nieve in the punishing stages to come, or indeed until the Spaniard remains a threat to Aru overall.
He is 2:10 down on the Italian and is the British team’s only realistic chance of making the finishing podium after the withdrawal of leader Chris Froome.
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They will still try to chase stage wins, however, and that tactic saw Salvatore Puccio go in the break today in search of the team’s first stage victory of the race.
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Alessandro De Marchi takes a fantastic solo win as he rode away from the five-man breakaway up the slopes of the final climb to Alto Campoo in the fog.
Alas, Puccio came up just short on the hellishly hard stage that finished on top of Alto Campoo after travelling 215 kilometres from Vitoria in the heart of the Basque country.
They’d also crested a category three and a category one ramp along the way.
In the race for the red jersey no one was able to put much significant distance into their rivals.
But it was Nairo Quintana (Movistar) who looked menacing as he put six seconds into Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) and seven seconds into Aru.
Tom Dumoulin (Giant Alpecin) and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) crossed the line 19 seconds back on race leader Aru, but Dumoulin held onto his third place overall, now 49 seconds down.
Sunday is another monster stage and will see them go 175 kilometres from Comillas to Sotres Cabrales, over a category two climb after 115 clicks and finishing 1210 metres above sea level on an eight kilometre ascent.
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