NICOLAS ROCHE IS waiting for a doping test. He’s in Italy resting up after the chaos of the World Championships, a day which started out with a glimmer of hope but ended in a collection of bumps, bruises and grazes.
The tester can’t find the apartment but she’s on her way. Roche waits. It’s a familiar routine.
On Sunday he rides the Tour of Lombardy which brings down the curtain on his 2013 season. Two days on from a heavy crash in the men’s road race, thankfully there’s no serious damage done.
In horrendous monsoon conditions in Florence, only 61 riders made it to the end of the 270km route. Roche and his three Irish team-mates — cousin Dan Martin, Matt Brammeier and Sam Bennett — all failed to finish.
A DNF was a disappointing way to go out in the last major race of the year but overall, 2013 has been a great year for Roche.
After taking a backseat to team leader Alberto Contador at the Tour de France, Roche was let off the leash by Saxo-Tinkoff at the Vuelta à Espana. He repaid their faith in spades, winning a stage and holding each of the four jerseys at one stage or another, including a day in the celebrated red jersey of the general classification leader.
In July he finished fifth in San Sebastian, a career-high finish for a one-day classic
All in all, is it fair to say that 2013 has been the best year of his career?
“I started off like a rocket in February but unfortunately I paid for being in form too early and I completely cracked in March, April. It took me a long time to get back.
“I rode the Tour as a team-mate with a whole different perspective and in the back of my mind, I always kept the Vuelta as the main goal. It was great to be able to come on to plan and to perform at the Vuelta.
All year long I was thinking I’ll be at the Tour and I’ll put my personal ambition aside but don’t worry because the team is going to give me my chance at the Vuelta. They did and it worked out well.
Lalo R. Villar/AP/Press Association Images
“I think it’s going to be the year that I will remember the most.
“I was sixth in the Vuelta in 2010 but psychologically, sixth is not top five and it was really great to be able to break through and make that extra step.
“The way I rode, I rode much stronger than a couple of years ago.”
Those results are the best vindication of Roche’s decision to leave AG2R-La Mondiale, his team of four seasons, and move to Saxo where he would be asked to play second fiddle to Contador.
The move was criticised by many as showing Roche’s lack of ambition, surrendering his chances of stage wins at a Grand Tour when, at 29, many feel he is just hitting his peak.
But Saxo think differently, he explains.
“I have great support there and they strongly believe in me. It’s great to have a team that is ready to take risks in a race as well. Unfortunately when I was with AG2R, a lot of the eggs were on me and I was focused on making sure that I didn’t mess up and stayed focus and won points.
“With Saxo they have a bit of a different mentality where they’re trying everything to win the race and they’re even willing to lose everything to win. I was sixth in GC in Penas Blancas [the Vuelta stage where he took the GC lead] and we had thought of a plan to attack with 30km to go.
Lalo R. Villar/AP/Press Association Images
“I could have lost everything and dropped from sixth in the GC to outside the top 10 easily. There was a big risk doing that but it was a great that I was prepared to do it and the team was backing me up.
If I was on a different team or at a different moment in my career, maybe I would not have done it and would have defended my sixth place.
There’s no doubt that Roche is comfortable with the choice he has made but there are some who feel his progress is cheapened by the fact that it has been achieved working with Bjarne Riis, the Saxo team manager who won the 1996 Tour de France but later confessed to doping.
Roche has shipped plenty of criticism, not least from journalist Paul Kimmage, for his decision to work with Riis but he shows no ambiguity when it comes to the question of doping. The sad truth about cycling’s sordid past, he says, is that few teams now are untainted.
“One, I wanted to go to Saxo but two, who else do I go for? What team today does not have a background or did not have a problem with one of its team leaders?
“Should I just stay at home because some Irish journalist is unhappy with my boss, because my boss did something wrong back in 1996 or 1997?
“I think people got over-excited without thinking: Roche is going to Saxo, he’s going to dope. No I’m not going to dope and I’m not doping.
“I’ve shown that going to Saxo has helped me to improve on a tactical side. I’m not especially way stronger, I just race harder.
“I’ve improved my TTs but I’m not winning TTs, I’m just doing better. There are a lot of improvements. I didn’t have a coach before but now I have a coach and I’m getting on well with my coach. It’s very difficult to find a coach that you get on well with.
The weather played havoc at the world championship road race last weekend (Graham Watson/POOL/Belga/Press Association Images)
“I was heavily criticised when I went to SaxoBank for the past of Riis. If you look at it, when I signed in August [2012], there were a lot of things that weren’t told and there was a lot of movement that came out during the winter which backed me up even more.
As I said, if you’re going to move teams today, which team does not have somebody who has been in the spotlight for bad reasons?
“I talked to Bjarne and he said I’m going to make you better tactically, I’m going to make you a better time triallist because I know you have it. That’s what I wanted and that’s what I needed. I knew that if I had a time trial specialist I could work on my time trials and that would help me make the step up in the Grand Tours.
“I could have gone to any team and there would have been the same talk. If it wasn’t Bjarne, it would have been somebody else who had the same issues.”
About the Nicolas Roche Classic:
This is the second year of the Nicolas Roche Classic which will give all cycling enthusiasts an opportunity to ride Irelands leading cyclist. There are three distances on the day, a 90km, 50km and 12km cycle with a family fun cycle of 12km also taking place. The route departs from Tayto Park in Ashbourne Co Meath on October 19th, you can register here www.nicolasrocheclassic.com or contact Niamh at the Down Syndrome Centre on 01 661 8000 to find out more.
