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Visualizzazione dei post da gennaio 21, 2019

'The day the sky fell in'

https://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/the-day-the-sky-fell-in-26553384.html Susan Daly July 25, 2009 The lavender plants lining the path to Lydia Roche's home in the south of France send up clouds of butterflies and fragrance as the visitor brushes past. From the shady terrace of her airy apartment, she takes in a view that sweeps down the rolling hillside to the town of Antibes and, beyond that, the sparkling azure sea where wealthy playboys anchor their yachts. Even on this beautiful day, a cloud passes over Lydia's face as she describes the moment two years ago when "the sky fell in". Her youngest son, Florian, then just seven years old, was diagnosed with the most severe form of leukaemia. He had complained of a tummy ache while on holiday in Ireland with his father Stephen Roche, the former cycling champion and Lydia's ex-husband. "When he came back I thought he was a bit skinny, very pale, but I think of the travelling -- I never thi

The horrifying day my little boy looked up at me and asked: ‘Am I going to die?’: Stephen Roche about the family trauma that proved as gruelling as any of his races

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2160478/Stephen-Roche-The-family-trauma-proved-gruelling-races.html 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 unconsciousness to win the Tour de France that year… But Stephen Roche was 47 and long retired before he discovered the real meaning of pain. Pain is having your seven-year-old son look up from his bed in the cancer hospital and ask you straight out: ‘Daddy, am I going to die?’  Fi

Stephen Roche: I had people spitting rice and wine in my face

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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/jun/04/tour-de-france-stephen-roche It is 25 years since the Irish cyclist's spectacular triple crown win, but he still cannot escape accusations of doping Donald McRae @donaldgmcrae The Guardian, Mon 4 Jun 2012  Stephen Roche ranks winning the 1987 Tour de France as his greatest achievement. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian If someone described the scenario to me now I'd be out of there," Stephen Roche says as he takes off his shirt. Naked from the waist up, Roche begins to detail the ordeal he endured when winning cycling's triple crown of the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France and the world road race in the space of a few brutal months in 1987. Roche is already an hour late for his own party, and the launch of a revealing book which celebrates the 25th anniversary of that iconic achievement, but he is bruised on the inside. Earlier in the day he helped bury his mentor, Claude Escalon, th