The horrifying day my little boy looked up at me and asked: ‘Am I going to die?’
Stephen Roche pictured with sons Florian and Alexis during the time when Florian was suffering from leukemia https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2160478/Stephen-Roche-The-family-trauma-proved-gruelling-races.html Stephen Roche about the family trauma that proved as gruelling as any of his races By JASON O'TOOLE Published: 01:34 GMT, 17 June 2012 | Updated: 14:16 GMT, 17 June 2012 View comments For 13 years, he earned his bread travelling at up to 60mph on inch-wide tyres, wearing nothing more protective than shorts and T-shirt, often with less than the width of a bicycle between him and his equally foolhardy rivals. It was a recipe for pain – and Stephen Roche endured his share. There was the shattered knee in 1986 that meant he rode in agony for the rest of his career; the kicking, spitting and punching he took from an angry Italian mob when he dared to beat their favourite in the 1987 Giro d’Italia; the emergency oxygen he received when he literally pushed himself to un...