1987 was the
year that Irish legend Stephen Roche joined Eddy Merckx to
become only the second person to win the Tour de France, Giro
d'Italia and the World Road Race Championship in the same
season.
Twenty-one years on from this great feat,
Roche looks back on an illustrious career and discusses what he
might have done differently and how members of his cycling
family may fare in the pro peloton.
CW: Do you miss the racing life
at all?
SR: No. No, I don't miss racing at all. Maybe I miss the
atmosphere a little bit. But I always said I'd never put a
number on my back again because once you put a number on, you
become a target, so I ride some of the randonnée events for
fun.
Do you keep in touch with any of
the riders from your racing days? SR:
Unfortunately no, because we're all on our own trips, we all
kind of go our own different ways. The problem is we see each
other and it's, “How are you doing? What are you doing? We must
meet up and have dinner.” But it never happens.
Everyone's got their own agenda and we're all running at 100
miles an hour in every direction. When there's an event where
an organiser has put something together and given us the
opportunity of getting together then I normally take it if I
can. It's nice to meet up; they're part of your life. It's
unfair to tear the pages out and just forget about it.
Would there be anything you
would've done differently looking back at your
career? SR: Maybe in the
Liège-Bastogne-Liège of '87 I would've looked over my shoulder
rather than having Moreno Argentin come from behind with 200
metres to go!
No, my career was as it was, I was a bit unlucky with my knee,
having my operations in '87 when I was world champion, so I
wouldn't mind wiping that out and doing it over again, but I
think basically when I drew the line at the end of my career, I
can look back and say I had a good career.
One thing people have always said
about you is that you're an effortless pedaller. Is there any
knack to that or did you just jump on a bike? Did you work on
it at all? SR: No, it was something
natural, which is good and bad. It's good in that sometimes
your opponents don't really know what's going on — they think
you're going well and they don't see that you're suffering. But
on the other hand, you're hanging in there, and then all of a
sudden you're just gone. The directeur sportif says, “Hey, you
were hanging in there fine,” — whereas I've kind of been in the
red for an hour, but they just don't see it. So they think,
“Oh, Stephen doesn't suffer.”
I think during my career I showed them on different occasions
and notably the stages of La Plagne in the Tour, that I did
suffer very much.
(Stephen Roche
today)
Normally, the big tour riders
can't race the Classics because 'you can't do everything'. Are
there any of the Classics you would like to have won, but had
to focus of the Tour or the Giro? SR:
I won Paris-Roubaix as an amateur and I would like to have won
it as a pro, and there was always the Tour of the Basque
Country the week beforehand and I was always going in there for
the win, which left me a bit sore for Paris-Roubaix.
Even though Sean Kelly won the Basque Country and then
Paris-Roubaix, my focus was always on the Tour de France.
When I rode the early-season Tour of the Mediterranean, I
always had a break before racing the Tour of the Basque Country
and Paris-Roubaix because my main objective was
Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and of course the Giro, whereas Sean and
riders like that who have won the double would basically be
preparing for the Classics only.
So, maybe, but then Paris-Roubaix was a bit of a lottery as
well, with the cobblestones and everything else. I finished
well up there a couple of times. I would've liked winning the
Tour of Lombardy, Milan-San Remo, or even
Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Describe your
friendship/relationship with Sean Kelly during racing, and
now. SR: I think myself and Sean, we rode
our careers together intelligently in that we're both Irish,
but at the same time we have a respect for each other and Sean
of course being a one-day rider and me being a stage race
rider, we had different conflicts.
Of course, we had our ups and downs and arguments at different
events but we were always able to cross the finish line and put
it behind us — it's very nice to be able to say that, because
many other riders can't. Whether they're British or Italian or
French, when you get two local heroes, they always have a
conflict. Myself and Sean, we were one and two for a number of
years and even at that level we'd stay friends and 'go to the
office' and have our fights in the office and then go home
again and be normal people. Of course with the distance we
don't see each other a lot but when we do it's always fun. It's
great.
From an outsider's point of view,
you seemed to have a good year every other year. Do you think
your knee injury was a factor — you couldn't perhaps do as much
as you wanted to?
SR: I don't know really. I had up and down years, I don't know
why, maybe because I raced a lot when I competed. When I raced,
I raced hard. There was no just riding for fun, or riding for
the finish. I always rode to win. And I rode 100 days racing a
year, starting in February and finishing in October, so they
were long seasons.
So maybe if I'd ridden a bit less, I would've had better
in-between years but it's difficult to say as well because some
years I was physically fit but I hadn't got the luck, and other
years I'd got the luck but I hadn't got the physical ability.
Looking back on it, you could say it was up and down, of
course, yeah.
If you weren't helping your
team-mate Claudio Chiappucci in the 1993 Tour de France, do you
think you could have finished higher than
13th?
SR: Yeah, I definitely could've done better, but for me my
career finished in '92 when I won the stage at Saint Étienne-La
Bourboule on the Tour. On that day on that stage, I thought,
“OK, I've done all I want to do now, in cycling. It'll be
difficult to win another World Championship or Tour de France
so now I've proved I can't go back to the top level, I'm going
to stop.”
So, 1993 was basically a wind-down year, and to ride for
Chiappucci and try and help him mature physically and
tactically. Of course I rode the Tour in '93, and I rode a
reasonably OK race for Chiappucci, but I was riding it for fun
as well. For me it was kind of my last Tour, my goodbye as
well.
Is it possible to have 'fun' on a
three-week Grand Tour?
SR: It hurts. I won't say I had fun, but I had no pressure. I
didn't really think, “Today I had fun,” but I had no pressure
to do well, or the pressure I put on myself.
If I'd have been riding for myself, I might've finished in the
first 10, but going from ninth place to third place is a
totally different story. Whereas I finished 13th, which was a
great result for my last Tour. I did enjoy it, which is the
main thing.
