THE SON OF former Tour de France winner, Stephen Roche, is to ride with an Irish-based team for the coming season — despite living in France.
16-year-old Alexis Roche lives in Antibes on the French Riviera but will race with a team known as Magnetic.ie – Nicolas Roche Performance Team.
The team of only junior riders (U18) is named after his well-known older brother (Nicolas) and has been developing young cyclists in Ireland for the past number of years, with some having gone on to race with bigger teams abroad.
Alexis will be one of three French-based riders making up what is a very strong-looking team but manager Philip Finnegan is placing no pressure on his latest recruit.
“Obviously having a father who is one of Ireland’s greatest ever sportsmen and a brother who rides for the biggest team in the world (Team Sky) will mean people expect loads from Alexis,” said Finnegan.
But he’s only 16 and in his first year in the junior ranks, so we won’t be putting any pressure on him, or any other rider.
“This is a development team and it’s about grooming riders for careers later on in life in the sport. They’re all still very young – and Alexis is one of our youngest.”
The team have some big goals this year and will race a packed programme of events both at home and abroad. They’ll start with a stage race in Belgium at Easter and do a number of other one-day and multi-day races, leading up to their biggest goal of the year, the Junior Tour of Ireland in July.
It’s unclear if Roche will be in the team for that race as teams are only allowed select five riders but given the fact some of the team will be riding for the Irish national team it certainly opens the door for Roche.