Another aggressive effort by Nicolas Roche today paid dividends for his Tinkoff-Saxo team, with Rafal Majka taking his second stage win of this year's Tour de France. Seen here battling his way to today's finish line (Photo: Stefano Sirotti)
Ireland’s Nicolas Roche put in a sterling performance on today’s 17th stage of the Tour de France, helping his teammate Rafal Majka to a second stage win at the summit finish of Pla d’Adet.
Roche and Majka were part of a large group of riders that rode across to an early eight man breakaway group on the first climb of the day after 50km.
The group’s lead was less than 40 seconds at the top of the Col du Portillon though, where Joaquin Rodriguez (Katusha) led Roche across the summit to take the 10 points on offer towards the king of the mountains competition.
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The 22 leaders regrouped on the descent before Vasil Kiryienka of Sky went clear and began to build up a maximum lead of two minutes on his former breakaway partners.
With little cohesion in the group behind, Roche forced the pace on the next climb, the Col du Peyresourde, going clear with Movistar’s Jesus Herrada and bringing Kiryienka back to within a minute and a half.
The duo were reeled in however at the foot of the penultimate Col du Val Louron with 30km remaining.
Roche slipped to the back of the group to recover for much of the climb before hitting the front towards the top and eventually reeling in lone leader Kiryienka before the summit.
Roche celebrates today's stage win for the team, having helped winner Majka along the way on a very tough stage in the mountains (Photo: Stefano Sirotti)
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With Majka sitting comfortably in the wheels, Roche followed an attack by Movistar’s Giovanni Visconti at the foot of the summit finish to Pla d’Adet and the duo were joined by Amael Moinard and a non contributing Pierre Rolland of Europcar.
After some more stop start attacking, Roche went clear with Visconti with 8km remaining but was dropped by the fresher Spaniard a kilometre later.
Rolland and Moinard rejoined Roche behind Visconti, before the polka-dotted Majka stormed across to the trio in the last 7km.
Once again, Roche pulled hard for Majka at the front before the Pole launched himself across to lone leader Visconti with 6km to go.
Majka left Visconti 2km later and soloed to his second stage win of this Tour.
Collecting the 50 points available for first man across the hors category summit finish line, he also increased his lead in the king of the mountains competition.
Behind Majka, race leader Vincenzo Nibali surged up to the remnants of the break with Jean Christophe Peraud of Ag2r to take third on the stage, while a clearly fatigued Roche hung on gamely for ninth, his best result of this Tour.
Contador may be long gone, but with two stage wins and the climbers' jersey for today's victor Majka, it's turning into a good Tour for Tinkoff-Saxo (Photo: Stefano Sirotti)
