Nicolas Roche has continued his strong run on the eRacing
circuit put in place due to the suspension of road racing; taking victory today
on stage 3 of the virtual Tour de Suisse.
The Digital Swiss 5 stage today featured a virtual summit
finish on Nufenen Pass with Roche winning solo by a clear margin.
After just over one hour’s racing he was 1:10 up on
runner-up Ilnur Zakarin (CCC Team), with Larry Warbasse (AG2R La Mondiale) in 3rd
a further seven seconds back.
While Pierre Latour (AG2R La Mondiale) broke clear on his
own before the climb, he was disqualified due to a technical issue with his
turbo trainer.
Roche had tracked the French rider closely in the early stages and when Latour disappeared from screen the Irish rider climbed the 13km finishing ascent to victory.
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He adds his win today to the 2nd place he took on
Wednesday’s stage 1 behind winner Rohan Dennis (Team Ineos) and his 3rd
place in the virtual Tour of Flanders.
“That was very, very difficult and intense, it was on
from the beginning,” Roche said after his win in today’s 33.5km race.
“Latour really put the pressure on at the beginning.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened to him but he suddenly disappeared
when we hit the bottom of the climb.
“He was really putting me under pressure and I was hoping
that we’d have a good battle but I suppose he had a technical problem.
“In terms of my own race; I just had to pace myself
because I had Kwiatkowski, Zakarin and Warbasse just behind me.
“I wasn’t capable of gaining much but I was steady so I
was kind of basing my effort on them behind. The climb was a bit longer than I
expected; the effort was longer.”
Roche said he was expecting an effort of just over an
hour but something short of the 1:10 the race actually took, describing the
last 3km as “absolutely horrible”.
“But I’m quite happy; it’s a good effort for us, for the
team and, as I said before, I’m quite happy to commit to these (virtual races).”
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