Nicolas Roche has described a bruisingly physical battle at the UCI Gravel World Championships yesterday, adding he stayed with the main favourites' group for a long time, until it was trimmed back to about 20 riders.
And though he is now two years out of the World Tour peloton, having retired from pro road racing at the end of 2021, Roche showed he can still produce the watts - over 163km - even though he is now mixing his cycling with other commitments and a lot of international travel.
He also said it was no surprise to him that the World Tour pros, rather than the specialist gravel riders, dominated the world title race in, saying he believed they were the best athletes and that nobody else in cycling was supported the way the World Tour pros were.
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“No one can do the Vuelta or the Tour to prepare for the Worlds of gravel and no one is paid enough money to train and commit as hard as a World Tour rider; you don't have the support,” he said. “I just believe that World Tour riders at the top are one of the fittest athletes on the planet.”
They were "better trained and better looked after" and "even the top (gravel) guys in the US would never have the support that you can have here and the amount of race days".
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Roche, now aged 39 years, said his finishing position of 36th some 22:16 down on winner Matej Mohorič (Slovenia) was "not amazing, but not bad". However, he has raced fewer than 15 days this year and stressed he was riding the gravel scene to challenge himself after his long road racing career.
He said "the start was absolutely mental" and was more like rugby than cycling, admitting to "not feeling comfortable in the bunch" and explaining he'd had enough crashes during his career and took action to avoid them in gravel if he could.
This was especially a feature at the start in Italy yesterday with "riders cutting in the inside on loose gravel, cutting the course through the grass and not following the route". And while he was caught out a little after being "swamped" at the back of the field, he and American rider, Alexey Vermeulen, managed to get to the front after about 45km.
The Irish rider - who was competing in his 30th Worlds - said once at the front he decided he would ride as hard as he could to stay in the group for as long as possible and just accept it when he blew. He had to bridge a gap from the second part of the peloton to the lead group, adding expanding that energy in the first 45km of racing cost him later.
With about 70km covered, the pace picked up and while he survived in the favourites' group over the next climb, he lost touch on the one after that, when the group was down to about 20 riders. He then got into a chasing group until about the 90km marker, saying he properly blew with about 40km to go and focused on getting to the finish.
At one point he had to slow right down to grab a bottle at a hectic feed station packed with about 100 people. And with about 30km to go Wout van Aert (Belgium), who had suffered two punctures, caught Roche's group with about seven other riders. And though he suffered through the final 40km, Roche said he found the legs to dig deep a few times and catch some small groups ahead.
