Indeed.He cracked big time. It reminded me a bit of watching footage of Indurain in 96. Suffered hugely and to do it in the tour on first proper mountain stage is sporting humiliation of the highest order.
American coverage of stage today hugely different to European coverage by the looks of it.
http://video.competitor.com/2010/07/cycling/velocenter-tdf-stage-8-extra/
Roche fairly fooked after stage by looks of it. Bit like his dad in 87
http://www.youtube.com/user/nicolasroche1984#p/u/2/Cat_sjzFIO0
These articles from Nicolas Roche almost make the Irish Indo worth buying. Very informative. Really hope he can continue to do well.
Stage 7: Saturday, July 10 – Tournus to Rousses Ski Station – 166kms
The weather on this year’s Tour has been strange. It’s been really hot and humid for most of the stages – the past two days we’ve ridden in over 35 degrees heat, but in the evenings there have been torrential rain showers and thunderstorms.
Last night there was no air conditioning in our hotel room, so myself and Dmitri Champion left the windows open for a bit of fresh air. After putting in my earplugs to drown out the noise of a Tour party in the village beside us, I eventually fell asleep, but for the second night in a row we were jolted awake in the middle of the night by another thunderstorm.
As the sky cracked and rumbled, the hailstones hopped off the open panes and into our bedroom and we had to shut the windows. Even with earplugs in, the rattling made it hard to sleep and we prayed the storm would blow out before this morning’s rendezvous with the first mountains of the Tour.
We had six mountains, with three second-category climbs coming in the latter part of the stage. The final one took us to the finish line at La Rousses ski station. I went over all of the climbs in the top 30 riders or so and had a couple of team-mates around me all day, giving me drinks and looking after me.
The second-last climb was particularly hard; there were a lot of attacks and Rinaldo Nocentini went clear with the notion of getting up the road in order to help me when we caught his group on the final climb, but he blew his lights and that didn’t work out as planned.
Because of the heat, I was wearing a new jersey today, one that is lighter and doesn’t have the tricolour bands of former Irish champion on the sleeves, so if you’re watching on TV, look out for the tricolour glasses instead.
The last climb was hard because it went up in fits and starts. Guys were going full belt on the flatter bits and then completely blowing the next time the road went up again. Our climber, Christophe Riblon, was disappointed he didn’t have the legs to stay in the front group but that happens, everybody can have a bad day. Although I had no team-mates left on the last climb, they had done their job and my legs were good.
I would have liked to have been in the top 10 on the stage but in trying to save my sprint until the very last moment, I left it too late. I finished 11th on the stage and moved up to eighth overall.
At the moment, I am only two seconds behind last year’s winner Alberto Contador after a week of racing. If you had offered me that, I would have taken it.
Although we have a week done, the tough bit of the Tour has only started.
One of the worst things about a mountain-top finish is you have to drive back down to get to the hotel afterwards. Although the roads are closed on the way up, they are open to the public after the stage and the teams get no special escort on the way back down.
The road was bumper-to-bumper with traffic and pedestrians – who seemed to be moving quicker than us. In the Ag2r team bus, it took over an hour to get the 20kms to the village below.
The team bus is not so bad though. We’d had our showers on board and I had the team listening to U2 as we ate some potatoes and ham on the way down. Just as we reached the hotel car park though, a massive storm hit again.
Stage 8: Sunday, July 11 – Rousses Ski Station to Morzine -Avoriaz – 189kms
The sun was back out this morning for the first real test of this year’s Tour.
When you start at one ski station and finish at another, you know there are going to be plenty of climbs along the way. Today we had five mountains to tackle, but two of them, the climb of the Col de la Ramaz and the climb to the finish in Avoriaz, were first category and would be really hard.
Before the start, I gave everyone on the team a specific job. Dmitri looked after the water in the early part of the stage, instead of having lots of guys going back to the car all day. I told him I didn’t care what he did for the rest of the stage once he got the water. Martin Elmiger, Rinaldo Nocentini and Lloyd Mondory stayed with me in the valleys and made sure I was sheltered from the wind and near the front of the group.
Maxime Bouet did the water when we hit the hills and John Gadret helped me on the climbs. Christophe Riblon was a bit pissed off with his bad day in the mountains yesterday, so he wanted to get up the road in a move, so that even if they got caught, he would be there at the end to help me on the last climbs.
The team did a great job again and I got over the first four mountains comfortably but the big test would be the final climb to the finish. Thanks to team effort, I was in a group that had been whittled down to all of the top guys on the Tour: Sastre, Contador, Schleck, Basso, Evans, Gesink, Kreuziger, Menchov – all the favourites for overall victory.
I didn’t feel as comfortable on this climb though and with around 6km to go, I started to feel like felt I was getting ‘the bonk’. For those of you who never heard of the bonk, it’s also known as the ‘hunger knock’ or simply ‘the knock’. It’s when you haven’t eaten or drunk enough during the day to replenish your energy stores and suddenly you’ve nothing left in the tank. Sometimes it’s hard to see straight, never mind ride a bike up a mountain.
When the pace increased shortly afterwards, I couldn’t follow the wheels and got dropped.
dropped
I knew there was a little group of four or five that had been dropped just before me and I eased up slightly to recover and tag onto them when they caught me. I hung onto this group until about 2kms to go to the summit. Again, I couldn’t follow the wheels and was dropped.
When I saw I was losing a lot of time for the overall classification, I started to have a bit of a panic attack and began to hyperventilate. I wanted to get to the line as quickly as possible. Gadret – who had ridden the climb at his own pace – caught me in the final kilometre and paced me to the finish, where I made it 100m past the finish line and fell onto the grass, dehydrated and wrecked.
The race doctors came over straight away. One of them held my head and poured cold water on me, while the other held my legs in the air. They handed me a can of Coke to drink and in a few minutes I recovered.
Since the Tour began, I’ve been strict with myself at meal times. For dinner, I’ve eaten just plain pasta with no sauce, maybe some cheese and a drop of olive oil. From now on, I will just eat normally. You use up almost 10,000 calories on a hard mountain stage, so a bit of pasta sauce isn’t going to go astray.
I crossed in 23rd place on the stage, two minutes and 18 seconds behind winner Andy Schleck. I dropped from eighth overall to 16th and am now three minutes and 11 seconds behind new race leader Cadel Evans.
I was angry with myself to have lost time on some of the favourites. But this is a three week race and anything can happen. I realise I’ve had a good Tour so far. This time last year, I was 20 minutes down after the first week.
- Nicolas Roche
Cman Menchov!
Shit about to hit the fan - Sastre gone.
Evans now as well - the eejit was saying how easy the climb was this morning. :lol:
How’s Menchov doing?
:lol:
Evans and Armstrong now basically gone - down to Andy and Berto already.
Menchov’s not far off the Contador/Schleck group. 20 or so seconds.
It’s more than that, he was about 1:20 behind Contador and Schleck going over the top the Madeleine. Long descent now. 25km left. Evans has completely blown.
Hopefully Roche can limit his loses.Gas the games that went on in the Madeleine between Schleck and Contador. Contador getting a bottle off Gutiérrez is pushing national loyalty to the max considering Sanchez could have been in yellow.Tactics pretty fascinating.
Watch out for Menchov.
Day 10: Tuesday July 13 – Stage 9: Morzine-Avoriaz to Saint Jean de Maurienne (204.5km)
With five mountains, including the first-category ascents of the Col de la Colombiere and the Col de Saisies to climb, this was always going to be one of the hardest stages of this year’s Tour.
Although we had four mountains, including those two first-category ascents to tackle beforehand, the Col de la Madeleine was always going to be where the race could be won or lost. The top of the Madeleine can be seen pointing 2km into the sky as you approach. The road to the summit goes up in gradients between 6.5 and 9.5pc, and drags on for an incessant 25km of torture.
The mountains of the Tour, as in any bike race, are ranked according to their difficulty. The smaller climbs are category four, with the hardest mountains ranked as first category. The Col de la Madeleine, however, is ranked as ‘Hors Categorie’ or ‘Out of Category’ which basically means it’s way harder than any of the climbs we’ve done so far, and the King of the Mountains points awarded for the first rider over the top are way higher than any other climb.
advantage
We reached the foot of the Madeleine after 145km of racing. By that stage, a group of eight riders – including my Ag2r team-mate Rinaldo Nocentini – had a six-minute advantage on the rest of us in the peloton. Although most of the breakaway group were no real threat to the overall contenders, Spaniard Luis Leon Sanchez of Caisse D’Epargne had begun the day just five minutes down and was now virtual leader of the Tour on the road. He had team-mates Christophe Moreau and Jose Ivan Gutierrez in the move and they were driving the break along.
The BMC team of Cadel Evans had been doing much of the chasing until we hit the Madeleine, but as we climbed higher and faster, the Saxo Bank team of second overall Andy Schleck put Chris Anker Sorenson on the front and he set a blistering pace. The gap began to come down dramatically on the hill but riders were getting shelled out the back of the peloton left, right and centre.
I was riding very close to the limit for most of the way up. Behind me a lot of the team leaders, including Bradley Wiggins (Sky), Mick Rogers (HTC Columbia), 2008 Tour winner Carlos Sastre (Cervelo) and Ryder Hesjedal of Garmin all went out the back door.
Even yellow jersey Evans began to suffer and got dropped out of the group.
I was still there. Still suffering. Still counting down the kilometres to the top; 12, 11, 10… I was on the limit and hoping this would be as hard and fast as it got.
But Alberto Contador knew he could take over in yellow if he could get rid of Schleck, so he ordered his men to the front in an effort to drop his rival. Contador’s right-hand man, Daniel Navarro, hit the front 9km from the top and blew the group to bits, pulling Schleck and Contador clear as I was ejected out the back.
I was in bits. I seem to go from being reasonably comfortable to just losing it in seconds. There’s no in between. I can ride at a certain tempo just under my limit for a long time but the top guys like Contador and Schleck still have a couple of notches to go up.
I got into a little group with my team-mate John Gadret, Hesjedal, Christophe LeMevel of Francaise De Jeux and Chris Horner from Radioshack. I knew that some of the guys like Wiggins, Sastre and Rogers, who had been ahead of me on GC, were dropped before me, so John set a really nice tempo for me and we tried to gain a bit of time on them. With 4km to go to the top, however, I cursed as Sastre, Rogers and the rest latched on to the back of our little group.
crazy
About a kilometre and a half from the top, I blew my lights again and got dropped. I was so disappointed, but I just couldn’t hold the wheel in front of me. There were still 34km to go to the finish and another team-mate, Christophe Riblon, caught me after a couple of corners on the way down. We knew we would lose time hand over fist to a larger group if we couldn’t get back on, so we did a crazy descent, throwing ourselves into corners, to get back.
After about 6km we rejoined the baker’s dozen ahead of us. Christophe and John joined Fleche and Loqvist of Sky, Gustov of Cervelo and Soutsou of HTC-Columbia at the front. All six were trying to limit their leader’s losses and they drove our group to the finish in Saint Jean de Maurienne. I crossed the line in 25th place on the stage, four minutes and 55 seconds behind stage winner Sandy Casar of Francaise De Jeux. Casar, along with three others, had held on from the original breakaway, although they were joined by Schleck and Contador by the finish. I dropped one place to 16th overall and am now 7’ 44" behind new race leader Schleck.
My tiredness after the stage was soon swamped by a feeling of disappointed. I seemed to be going backwards, but afterwards, when I looked at the guys who were in my group, I realised it could have been much worse. Sastre, Wiggins and Rogers all lost the same time as me. Evans lost over eight minutes and his yellow jersey.
While the favourites for the Tour are now clearly Schleck and Contador, almost everybody else seems to be good one day, bad the next, and fighting for places. Maybe now I’ve lost a bit of time, I will be given a bit more leeway to get into breakaway groups, although I’m not convinced. Either way, I haven’t given up fighting yet.
- NICOLAS ROCHE
Cycling is fantastic.
Roche has just attacked. No chance of winning just looking to gain gc time i’d say
Roche gains around eighty seconds on all other gc riders. Moves up few places on GC. Well done Nico!
Yeah fair fucks. He is a smart rider. Would love to see him win a stage.
Both smart and aggressive. Good combination. Would lvoe to see him get a stage as well but I’d say his focus will be entirely on gaining time for a potential top 10 finish. Think he’ll be happy to get a bit of time wherever he can as opposed to spending energy trying to get across the line first.
Where would I get highlights for today’s stage?