Nicolas Roche at full speed in today's prologue stage of the Tour of Romandie, where he hopes to make an impact overall.
Nicolas Roche was back in action today, Tuesday, lining out for his Tinkoff-Saxo squad in the opening prologue of the Tour de Romandie in Switzerland.
Roche hasn’t raced since Milan-San Remo in March, focusing instead on a three-week altitude training campewith his Tinkoff-Saxo team on Mount Etna in Italy.
“It’s been an important camp in terms of preparing for the Giro,” said Roche.
“Tour de Romandie is a tough race with plenty of good riders here. It will give me a chance to test myself and see how I’m going ahead of the Giro.
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"Today’s time trial was a bit of a wake up for the body, even though we trained really hard over the past month, you can't replace racing. Hopefully I can be competitive here.”
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Today’s 5.5km individual time trial in Ascona was won by Polish champion Michal Kwiatkowski of Omega Pharma Quickstep.
Roche finished 20 seconds down in 51st place and just 10 seconds off defending Tour de France champion Chris Froome of Team Sky.
Kwiatkowski has been in great form of late, finishing fifth at the Amstel Gold Race and third at both Fleche-Wallone and Liege-Bastogne-Liege last week.
The Polish champion even managed to beat his Omega Pharma Quickstep teammate and world time trial champion Tony Martin in today’s race against the clock.
"It's hard to say if I can win overall," said Kwiatkoswki afterwards.
"It depends on how I recover from the Ardennes Classics. This is the last race of my spring season and we've got good riders here with Tony Martin and Rigoberto Uran, so we're looking forward to the next few stages."
Tomorrow’s 199km road stage features a first and second category ascent on the road to Sion.
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