STEPHEN ROCHE – Triple Crown Winner

The only rider besides Eddy Merckx to win the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and World Championships in the same season, Ireland’s Stephen Roche had an easy smile and smooth pedalling style that hid an iron will

Writer: Peter Cossins
Procycling, June 2012

For fans of a certain age, Stephen Roche embodies the first golden age of English-speaking readers. Together with the likes of compatriot Sean Kelly, Britain’s Robert Millar, Australia’s Phil Anderson and the USA’s Greg LeMond, Roche helped to change the complexion of the sport both inside their native countries and within the wider cycling world.

All of these riders stand out in their own particular way, Roche primarily making his mark thanks to an astonishing string of performances during the 1987 season. He started it right off the competitive radar as the result of a heavy fall onto his right knee during the Paris Six-Day in November 1985. During the subsequent season, he made so little impact with his new Carrera team that they attempted to renegotiate his contract downwards.

However, a knee op during the winter of 1986 helped him get back on track, victories at the Tour of Valencia and Romandy during early 1987 underlining his recovery. From Romandy he went to the Giro and won 18 days before starting the Tour, which he also won. When he lined up at the World six weeks later, he became the first rider since Eddy Merckx to win all three titles in the same season. In the 25 seasons since, only Miguel Indurain in 1993 came close to repeating this feat. The Dubliner emerged as a teenager with prodigious racing ability in the mid-1970s. Having quickly established himself on the Irish junior team, he wasted no time proving himself in the senior ranks, winning the Raás Tailteann in 1979 aged 19, the youngest rider to take the title. His record still stands. Martin Earley, who would soon follow Roche into the pro ranks, remembers his compatriot as a precocious talent. “He was three years older than me then, and that was a lot at that age, but it was clear he had a lot of potential,” says Earley. “He was obviously one of the best in Ireland at that time. Up to the time he went to France to join the ACBB, he didn’t train massively, one of us did, but he didn’t need to really. He could get by to a large extent on natural talent.”

In 1980, Roche took up an offer to join the famous Athlétic Club de Boulogne-Billancourt, previously home to Ireland’s first Tour de France star, Shay Elliott, as well as Robert Millar, Bernard Thévenet, Phil Anderson and a host of other greats. Roche’s goal was to learn all he could and use his stint with the ACBB both as preparation for the 1980 Moscow Olympics and as stepping-stone to the pro ranks, where Roche’s idol Kelly was already showing Irish riders how far they could go if they were talented and determined enough.

“I think when you’ve got that talent and you go to France or somewhere similar and devote yourself 100 per cent to cycling, then you just mushroom up,” says Earley. “I’m sure that Stephen was looking at Sean and saying, ‘I’m from a similar background, why shouldn’t I be up there?’ I know I was thinking that about Stephen and Sean. When they went into both the amateur ranks and the pro ranks they were winning almost straight away. They both went from being Irish national-class rider to world-class riders within a year.”

Roche’s Olympics hopes come to nought in the mid-summer heat of Moscow. However, a run of late-season successes helped him to secure a pro contract with Peugeot. The winner of 19 races in that year with the ACBB, including the amateur version of Paris-Roubaix, Roche didn’t pause on entering the pro ranks. Thanks to victory in the Tour of Corsica and the Paris-Nice, where he remains the only neo-pro to take the title, he quickly drew comparisons with Bernard Hinault due to his ability, quotability and hard-headedness.

Photographer Graham Watson, who saw Roche’s emergence at close quarters, believes it is this last quality more than anything that set the Irishman apart. “He had real balls, no fear of anything or anybody”, says Watson. “He was hard on himself and on others. He didn’t piss around when it came to going for what he wanted. He wasn’t interested in second place. The only rider that came close to him in terms of tenacity was Lance Armstrong but I think Roche had a touch more. They both had talent but both had to work to make it count.”

Roche struggled to make that talent count consistently. “Most people’s careers have their ups and downs but Stephen had extremely high ups and extremely bad downs. Almost year to year, it was like a ball bouncing,” says Earley. After a stellar neo-pro season in 1981, Roche had a fitful 1982, rebounded in 1983, disappointed in 1984 in a new role as leader of the La Redoute team, then came back when he finished third at the 1985 Tour.

***

THE NEXT TWO seasons were even more extreme as Roche first plunged to greater depths before soaring to astonishing heights. Effectively riding on one leg during his first season with Carrera in 1986, he abandoned the Giro and was an also-ran at the Tour. Written off by many, including to some extent his own team, Roche responded to that with a staggering run of results. Although it is Tour de France victory that stands out for most, his Giro success was arguably even more impressive.

“I think his ’87 Giro was the greatest grand tour win I’ve ever witnessed,” Watson declares. “He had to go on the attack to win that race and he was taking on his own team, Italian cycling, the media, everyone. He not only beat his own team, which was extremely strong, but he also beat the system in cycling that says that you don’t attack your own team-mates. Alberto Contador’s Tour win in 2009 reminded me very much of Roche in that Giro, taking on his own team and winning.”

Roche rival was his team-mate Roberto Visentini, who was not only the defending Giro champion and Italian but also hailed from the hinterland of Brescia, near the town where Carrera had their HQ. The two Carrera riders were stronger than everyone else in the race but one of them had to give. It seemed it would be Roche when he lost the maglia rosaafter being given a severe mauling by Visentini in the time trial at San Marino. But the Dubliner responded with an attack two stages later that produced uproar within his team and within Italy as a whole. Back in pink, Roche was very much a target as the race headed into the Dolomites. “On the stage over the Marmolada the weather was so black you couldn’t take pictures and it was hard to see what was going on with the crowds but I’ve no doubt he was in danger,” recalls Watson. “It was a thrilling stage to witness. I think being in that situation made him harder. He wasn’t going to yield to anyone. Once he got the pink jersey he basically faced Visentini down. I know Visentini fell toward the end of the race but such was the pressure that Roche put on him that he effectively gave up and went home.”

Rabobank team manger Erik Breukink, the riding for the Panasonic team and the rider who pushed Roche and Visentini harder than anyone, remembers it well. “Roche was riding in the middle of the group all the day surrounded by team-mates and other riders. He never went anywhere near the edge of the road. You could feel the aggression coming from the fans towards him and we were all afraid that someone might jump into the middle of the group t get him. I’d never seen anything like that on a race before and I haven’t since then either.”

Multiple track champion Tony Doyle, who was Roche’s partner when he crashed in Paris and frequently rode with him at six-day meeting, believes that Roche’s Giro victory fundamentally changed the Irishman. Just winning the Giro was phenomenal but doing so despite having his team riding against him was incredible and must have taken the pressure off him for the Tour,” says Doyle. “It must have given him huge confidence since when you’re winning, and winning well, it all becomes a lot easier for you. He must have gone into the Tour de France as a totally different rider.

***

GRAHAM WATSON REMEMBERS it as a very complicated Tour. “It was hardly charged because so many French riders were up for it and Roche was basically one of them as well,” he says of Roche”, who has describe himself as “50 per cent French, but 100 per cent Irish”.

“My memory of the final week was that he rode much more conservatively than he had at the Giro,” says Watson. “I guess he was feeling tired from the effort he made there and couldn’t ride in the same aggressive way. But at La Plagne you could see that he’d given everything he had. He’d gone into the black and then beyond that. He was practically unconscious when he crossed the line.”

Of the ‘three triple’ crown events that Roche won in 1987, the World Championship was perhaps the most unlikely given his relatively poor record in one-day races and the fact that he was committed to working for Kelly. “We couldn’t really come up with a plan because we had a such a small team,” says Earley of Ireland’s five-man team, right fewer than the Italians for example. “All we could do was get the two of them to the finish in as good shape as possible and the let them take their chance, and Stephen took his chance.

“I wasn’t surprised to see him win because he was in the form of his life. He could have won any race that year. At the end of the World Championship, when everyone is tired, people will watch the sprinters because they’ll want to know who they’re up against if there’ a group contesting the finish, but anything can happen. Strength becomes such a key factor at a moment like that. Stephen may have looked like the perfect stylist on the bike but he was trying really hard. He absolutely buried himself. He had bucket loads of talent and it was just a case of all the switches being turned on at the right time, and that was it…”

To an extent, that was it for Roche’s days as a grand tour contender too. Having signed big contract with Fagor and encouraged them to sign Millar, Sean Yates and several other riders close to the Irishman, Roche struggled to reach the very top level again. Indeed, although there were some flashes of brilliance, he didn’t produce another consistently impressive season until he returned to Carrera in 1992.

His former manager, Frank Quinn, who also looked after Kelly and continues to do so, believes Roche made some bad decisions when he rode for Histor and Tonton Tapis after two disastrous years with Fagor. “The moves to the Belgian teams came about through taking contracts for the money without actually looking at the value of the team,” Quinn says. “Some of these teams have got money but they don’t have the set-up. In many cases, Stephen didn’t think enough about his moves. Some teams he should have stayed away from.”

Watson agrees that Roche’s head was turned by success but believes there was another reason why he struggled between spells with Carrera. “I think he adopted the Italian way of doing things. He was a don, a real capo, and he tried to apply that thinking after he left Carrera and it didn’t work. He was a real boss, totally ruthless when he needed to be – he didn’t take prisoners,” says Watson.

Quick-Step directeur sportif Brian Holm, who spent a season with Roche at Histor, backs this up, pointing out that Roche didn’t have enough quality riders to support at the Belgian team when he most needed them, but remembers his team leader fondly. “I had already got to know Sean Kelly and the two guys were just so different. In my first years there was no ice cream and I was living like a monk, as that was Kelly’s way. Then when Stephen joined the team I saw a completely different a way of doing things. He was so relaxed. One of the first sights I saw was Stephen eating ice cream and I thought: ‘Whoa!’ But he’d won [the Giro and] the Tour and the Worlds so I guessed he knew what he was doing.

“Everything he did was so relaxed. He was so friendly with fans when we were at the Tour. He’d give autographs and talk to people. In those days we didn’t have big team buses so you’d be sat in a van. There’d be 300 people around and he’d just take his time aswe all sat there thinking: “Close the fucking door!” There was always a lot of laughter. He was a good man, I really liked him, so mellow.”

Ultimately, Roche did get back on track with Carrera, taking an emotional stage win at the 1992 Tour before retiring, aged just 33, the season after. Watson suggests that he had more down than ups considering what he achieved in the first half of his racing career compared to the second but there is no doubt knee and back injuries took their toll.

Earley is more upbeat in his assessment. “When will someone else achieve what he did? It’s quite incredible. They don’t even try to win the Giro and Tour nowadays. To have two riders of the calibre of Stephen and Sean come through at the same time from such a small country was astonishing. Any nation that had two riders like them would have felt they were extremely lucky,” he says.

Doyle is of the same mind. “To achieve what he did when he did was incredible, and I don’t think the significance of that has been fully appreciated, especially as he was from a non-cycling nation. But, great wins apart, the one thing that stands out about Stephen is that he was on of the best, if not the best, pedaller I’ve ever seen. He had incredible supplesse. He was the prettiest pedaller.”

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

1979 Youngest winner of the Rás Tailteann

1980 19 victories riding for ACBB amateur team

1981 Wins the Tour de Corse and Paris-Nice weeks after turning pro

1983 Wins Tour de Romandie, 13thon his Tour de France debut

1985 Third overall and a stage win (Aubisque) at the Tour

1987 Wins the Giro, Tour and Worlds, plus Valencia and Romandie

1989 Wins the Vuelta al País Vasco

1992 Ninth overall and stage win at the Tour

1993 Ninth at Giro and 13thon his final Tour