Stephen Roche
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Stephen Roche (Irish: Stiofán de Róiste) was born November 28, 1959 in Dundrum near Dublin, Ireland and is a retired professional cyclist. In a 13-year professional career, he peaked in 1987, becoming only the second cyclist in history to win the Triple Crown of overall victories in the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia stage races, plus victory in the World Cycling Championship. Roche's rise to prominence in the sport coincided with that of his fellow Irishman and great friend Seán Kelly although the two were never teammates.
Although generally acknowledged as one of the finest cyclists of his generation and admired by purists for his effortless pedalling style, he struggled with a series of chronic knee injuries and never meaningfully contended in the Grand Tours post-1987. Although a Tour de France victor, it is said that Roche never contended at peak fitness in a truly open and competitive race including the prominent riders of his generation. Roche's career palmares included 58 professional wins.
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[edit] Amateur career
On completion of his apprenticeship as a machinist in a Dublin dairy and following a successful amateur career in Ireland (including a win in the legendary Rás Tailteann in 1979), Roche travelled to France and joined the vaunted Parisian ACBB Boulogne-Billancourt amateur team. According to Roche himself the move to ACBB was largely to aid his preparation for the 1980 Olympic games road race to be held in Moscow. Soon after his arrival Roche won the amateur Paris-Roubaix, escaping with Belgium rider Dirk Demol and sprinting to victory on the track at Roubaix. Famously, during the race Roche was told by his director sportif that if he did not win then "he would be sent home to Ireland that day".
Although he also finished on the podium at the early-season Paris-Eze, a knee injury caused by a poorly fitted shoe plate led to a disappointing ride at the Moscow games. However on his return to France, an amazing spell from August to October saw Roche win an incredible 19 races and led to the offer of a professional contract with the Peugeot professional cycling team for the 1981 season.
[edit] Early professional career
In an extraordinary debut season, Roche scored his first professional victory by beating Bernard Hinault in the Tour of Corsica. Less than a month later he won the early season Paris-Nice stage race (despite illness caused by severe cold on the descent from Mont Ventoux) and finished his impressive debut season with further victories in the Tour de Corse, Circuit d'Indre-et-Loire and Etoile des Espoirs races with an impressive second place behind Hinault once again in the Grand Prix des Nations.
In a disappointing 1982 season his best performance was second in the Amstel Gold Race, but his rise to prominence continued in 1983 with victories in the Tour de Romandie, Grand Prix de Wallonnie, Etoile des Espoirs and Paris-Bourges. In the 1983 Tour de France, Roche finished 13th and he finished the 1983 season with a bronze medal in the World Cycling Championship at Alterheim in Zurich.
In 1984, now riding for the La Redoute team following contractual wrangles with his Peugeot bosses (which would lead to Roche sporting Peugeot branded cycling shorts for many years after his departure from the team), he repeated his Tour de Romandie win, also won Nice-Alassio, Subida a Arrate and was second in Paris-Nice. He finished 25th in that years edition of the Tour de France.
In 1985, Roche won the Critérium International, the Tour Midi-Pyrénées and came second (again) in Paris-Nice and third in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. In the 1985 Tour de France Roche won stage 18 to the Aubisque and ultimately finished on the podium in 3rd position, 4 minutes and 29 seconds behind race winner Bernard Hinault.
[edit] Chronic knee injury
In 1986 while riding at a six day event with UK professional Tony Doyle at Paris-Bercy, Roche crashed at high speed and badly damaged his right knee. This injury destroyed his debut 1986 season at new team Carrera with little to show for the season other and a finish in the 1986 Tour de France in 48th place a massive 1h 32' behind winner Greg LeMond, a tour that Roches described as like "entering a dark tunnel" of pain.
The chronic injury, and associated back problems, would recur throughout his career (for example in the 1989 Tour Roche retired after banging the problem knee on his handlebars) and even surgical intervention under the esteemed Dr. Muller-Wohlfahrt in Munich did little good. It was also suggested that a change from the old clips and straps to early generation clipless pedals in 1988 may have exacerbated the problem.
By the end of his career Roche was said to be unable to properly address his pedal on any axis, was subject to massive power loss in the right leg. In retirement he described riding the 1993 Tour de France as "just for fun" knowing he would be unable to compete at the level required.
[edit] 1987 Triple Crown
In 1987, Roche had a tremendous season that is the dream of all professional cyclists. In the spring, he began by winning the Tour of Valencia, taking a third victory in the Tour de Romandie and fourth place plus a stage win in Paris-Nice. He also finished second in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the closest he ever got to winning a professional 'Monument' Classic and blaming his failure to win on tactical naivete and "riding like an amateur" on the day.
In the Giro d'Italia, Roche took three stage wins (including a team win with Carrera in the team time trial) en route to overall victory and thus becoming the first Giro victor from outside mainland Europe. In the Giro he contended with the tifosi's unambiguous, vocal and sometimes interventional support for his Italian Carrera team-mate and 1986 Giro winner Roberto Visentini. It was said that the only member of his team that Roche could rely on not to ride against him in the Giro was his longtime domestique Eddy Schepers, although Roche recruited the support of the Panasonic riders and ACBB teammates of old Robert Millar and Australian Phil Anderson to encircle and protect him with Schepers on the pivotal Marmolada climb (a day known as the "Marmolade Massacre"). Roche's stage wins that year in the Giro were stage 1b, the infamous 8 km time trial run downhill on the Poggio into San Remo and stage 22, a 32 km individual time trial into St. Vincent. Despite his stage wins, the race is best remembered for the gruelling stage from Lido di Jesola to Sappada, where Roche broke away alone early in the day and despite being caught late in the race, had the strength to go with the counterattack and take the pink jersey from Visentini.
Roche finished the Giro mentally and physically exhausted but suddenly found himself as favorite for the upcoming Tour de France. Following Bernard Hinault's retirement, Laurent Fignon's choppy form and with Greg LeMond out injured following his accidental shooting in a hunting accident, the 1987 Tour de France was one of the most open of recent years. It was also one of the most mountainous routes since the war with a record 25 stages. Roche raced hard, winning the 87.5km individual time trial stage 10 to Futuroscope and taking second place on stage 19. On the next stage, a particularly gruelling Alpine stage crossing both the Galibier and the Madeleine and finishing at La Plagne, Roche had to chase his nearest rival Pedro Delgado who attacked on the final climb. Despite being almost 1 minute down on the last climb, Roche pulled the deficit back to just 5 seconds on the line. Roche collapsed and lost consciousness at the finish and was given oxygen. When asked when revived if he was okay, he famously replied "Oui, mais pas de femme toute suite" ("yes, but I am not ready for a woman straightaway").
The yellow jersey changed hands several times with Charly Mottet, Roche, Jean François Bernard and Delgado all wearing it before Roche used the final 35km time trial to overturn a half-minute gap and win the Tour by what was at the time the narrowest margin ever of just 40 seconds (two years later, Greg LeMond beat Laurent Fignon by 8 seconds). Thus Roche became only the fifth cyclist in history to win the Tour de France and the Giro in the same year. He was also the first and only Irishman ever to win the Tour de France, a fact marked by then-Irish premier Charles Haughey joining Roche on the victors podium on the Champs-Élysées.
Later that year, with victory at the World road race championship in Villach in Austria, Roche became only the second cyclist in history to have won the Triple Crown of Cycling. It was said Roche arrived at the race with poor form and insufficient training although he worked tirelessly during the 23 laps, 278 kilometre race over undulating terrain for his Irish teammate Seán Kelly and had escaped in the race winning break only while covering for his countryman. With pre-race favorite Moreno Argentine in the following group as well, Kelly did not chase and as the break slowed and jostling for position began for the seemingly inevitable sprint, Roche attacked 500 metres from the finish and crossed the line victorious with just metres to spare from the descending pack.
And after such a year, victory in the season-long Super Prestige Pernod International competition was also assured.
[edit] Post-1987 career
At the close of the 1987 season, Roche announced a change in team from Carrera to Fagor and brought with him an apparently hand-picked selection of team mates including the English riders Sean Yates, Malcolm Elliot, multiple Tour de France King of the Mountains winner Robert Millar and loyal domestique Eddy Schepers. The composition of the team was criticised at the time as containing too many English speakers and not enough continental professionals.
The 1988 season began badly, with a recurrence of the old knee injury and Roche's career began a gradual decline. In 1989 he again took second places in the Paris-Nice stage race (making four second places in total) and the Semaine Catalane but with his Fagor team in disarray he changed team once again. In 1990, racing for new Histor Sigma team he won the Four Days of Dunkirk and 1991 riding for Roger De Vlaeminck's short-lived TonTon Tapis team brought victories in the Semaine Catalane and Critérium International although Roche was rumoured to have reduced De Vlaeminck to tears in trying to explain why Roche had not achieved more success that season.
In the Grand Tours, he was ninth in the 1989 Giro, and won famously won a stage of the 1992 Tour de France in appalling conditions into La Bourboule (once again racing for the Carrera team but now in support of team leader Claudio Chiappucci) and en route to a final ninth place. A year later, he was again ninth in the Giro and 13th in the Tour de France.
Roche retired from the professional peloton at the end of an anonymous 1993 season which yielded just a single win, in the post-Tour de France criterium at Chateau Chinon.
[edit] Relationships with team-mate and teams
Roche was long rumoured to be a difficult proposition to manage within teams. Contractual wrangles with sponsors and fallings out with team mates seemed to come as part of the Roche package and often overshadowed his performance on the bike. His moves from the Peugeot team to La Redoute and then on to Carrera always seemed to be accompanied by some animosity - indeed Roche sported Peugeot logos on his uniform long after he had departed from that team as part of a contractual dispute settlement.
Patrick Valcke was originally Roche's mechanic at Peugeot and followed Roche from team-to-team before becoming his Director Sportif at the Fagor team before also falling out with him as the sponsor tried to withdraw from the sport citing disappointment at Roche's performance.
Following his 1987 season and until his return to Carrera in 1992, it was said Roche was distracted by the constant need to pacify sponsors and ensure he remained in contract. By the time this stability returned in 1992, Roche was no longer the designated team leader and was winding down his career.
[edit] Performance-enhancing drugs
In May 1990, Paul Kimmage a former professional cyclist, Fagor team mate of Roche and a fellow Dubliner published a powerful and frank account of life in the professional peloton. His book Rough Ride exposed the drug usage apparently endemic in the peloton but spoke in fawning terms about his boyhood idol and former Fagor team leader Roche. Publication of the book resulting in an aggressive and visceral reaction from Roche, including the threat of litigation, despite no direct suggestion of drug usage by Roche ever having been made by Kimmage.
In 2004 Roche was implicated in an Italian court case relating to claims that Dr Giovanni Grazzi, a doctor at Roche's Carrera team in 1993 and an associate of Dr Michele Ferrari, had administered EPO to a number of members of the team, including Roche. Although the use of codenames masked the actual recipients and Roche's strenuous denials of ever having taken performance enhancing drugs during his career, the judge in the Italian judicial inquiry, Franca Oliva, was quoted as saying "One cannot but arrive at the conclusion that Dr Grazzi was effectively involved in the direct dispensing of EPO..."
Franca Oliva also noted that "the court was faced with total omerta on the part of the athletes, even in the face of the most obvious and incontrovertible evidence". Although the Italian courts have proved single minded in their determination to pursue riders accused of doping, under the statute of limitations neither Roche, his Carrera team mates nor the team doctor can now be prosecuted under Italian law.
Although Roche continues to remain subject to considerable speculation over potential performance enhancing drug usage, he has consistently denied ever using drugs whether banned or known to be performance enhancing but not at that time banned. Roche was subjected to numerous drug tests during his time as a professional rider and never failed a test.
[edit] Family and post-cycling career
Roche lives in France and owns and operates a hotel, the Roche Marina Hotel, on the Cote d'Azur and has established bicycle training camps on the Spanish island of Majorca. He also works as a sometime commentator on cycling events for the Eurosport television channel and an ambassador at the Tour de France for Coeur de Lion cheese company.
Married to Lydia, he has two children one of whom, Nicholas Roche, is also now a professional cyclist with the French Cofidis road racing team.
His brother Lawrence Roche was also a professional cyclist and the pair raced together in the colours of Carrera in the peloton for a number of years.
[edit] Teams
- 1981–1983: Peugeot
- 1984–1985: La Redoute
- 1986–1987: Carrera
- 1988–1989: Fagor
- 1990: Histor Sigma
- 1991: TonTon Tapis
- 1992–1993: Carrera
[edit] Quotes
While it is a very hard and sometimes very cruel profession, my love for the bike remains as strong now as it was in the days when I first discovered it. I am convinced that long after I have stopped riding as a professional I will be riding my bicycle. I never want to abandon my bike. I see my grandfather, now in his seventies and riding around everywhere. To me that is beautiful. And the bike must always remain a part of my life.
- Stephen Roche
I have never taken performance enhancing drugs whether banned or unbanned, on or off the list, at any time. In fact, I underwent hundreds of tests during my career and all were negative.
- Stephen Roche
[edit] External links
| Preceded by: Moreno Argentin |
World Road Racing Champion 1987 |
Succeeded by: Maurizio Fondriest |
| Preceded by: Greg LeMond |
Winner of the Tour de France 1987 |
Succeeded by: Pedro Delgado |
| Preceded by: Roberto Visentini |
Winner of the Giro d'Italia 1987 |
Succeeded by: Andrew Hampsten |
