Nicolas Roche will ride both the time trial and the road race at the national championships this coming weekend. He competed in the Eindhoven time trial ProTour event on Sunday and his Crédit Agricole team finished a solid eighth, exactly one minute behind the victorious CSC squad.
“I was pretty happy,” he told Irishcycling.com on Sunday. “This week myself and Mark Renshaw did TT practice, the two of us. We were doing one hour efforts to get the preparation in for the time trail. On Tuesday and Thursday we did time trial stimulation and that worked out well for us today.
“The team said that they were hoping for top five but they are happy enough with eighth.”
Looking back to the Giro, Roche feels that he rode well in places but that he probably had better form in the races prior to starting his first Grand Tour.
“I was expecting something hard [from the Giro] but I was also expecting my individual performance to be better. I was hoping to have a bit more form there but unfortunately I wasn’t riding the way I wanted to ride. I think I hit form too early [ie before the race]. I started the Giro and felt very good for the first few days, but then after that I was just surviving. I should have been a lot better in the mountains.
“I wasn’t feeling as good as I was expecting to be, for myself, but it was a very hard Giro and there wasn’t much opportunity for breakaways. The top guys were just working their way up. I think there were only three breakaways which worked in the end…there wasn’t many opportunities for young guys who are not team leaders.”
However he had a confidence booster on stage 18: “With a few days to go I got thirteenth on a stage. That was a good sign.”
Ideally he would have been able to relax for a week afterwards but this was not to be. “The first week after the Giro I had to do a power test for the team on Tuesday. Then there was a crit on the Friday. So it wasn’t a proper full week’s rest.
“After that, I had two days off and then I had a whole week’s training, just doing long spins to get the kilometres back in again.
“It is hard to know how the nationals will go. I hope they go well! I have only done one really long spin since the Giro. I hope I should be good for the time trial. McCann is going to be hard to beat and O’Loughlin is going pretty good as well, but I’d like to do a decent ride there. I heard the road course is hard so hopefully that will work out well.
“I will also be doing the Tour of Ireland, that has been confirmed now,” he said.
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TWO ROCHES FOR DUNDRUM
This year’s 20th anniversary of Stephen Roche’s triple of Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and world championships will be commemorated at the Grand Prix bearing his name in Meadowmount, Dundrum, tomorrow night (Wednesday).
Both Stephen and his son Nicolas will be in attendance at the race, the former to present the prizes and the latter competing in his first Irish event since finishing the Tour of Italy four weeks ago.
“It will be great to have both of the Roches there,” said Paul Tansey of the promoting Orwell Dundrum Town Centre club. “In order to commemorate his achievements in 1987, we will have three special sprints during the race – the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and the World Championship primes.
“We expect a good turnout at the event because of this, and also as we feel it is the perfect tune-up before the Irish national championships this weekend. The race is great for speed and is not too long.”
Sign on will take place in Meadowmount and closes at 7.45. The main race starts at 8pm and will be preceded by an underage event starting at 7.15.