Nicholas Roche's Tour De France diary: 'It was a nightmare. The road rash on my back and knee were stinging like hell'

AFTER Marc (Hirschi) winning the stage the day before and us taking it as easy as we could yesterday, today was another all-in day for my Sunweb team.

With no single leader here, this was all about racing as if it was a single-day race and the whole team was chasing another stage win.

A very hilly day with a tough second-category climb sandwiched between a third-category and three fourth-categories, we reckoned the stage could go either of two ways.

Either a big breakaway group would go early on and stay clear to the finish, or else the Bora-Hansgrohe team of Peter Sagan would try to make things hard for Sam Bennett on the climbs so that Sagan could possibly snatch his green jersey by the end of the stage.

When the first attacks came this morning we were pretty active and soon our sprinter Cees Bol found himself in a little three-man group after a few kilometres.

There was a general feeling that Bora-Hansgrohe were going to try and control things, though, and we knew a three-man group hadn’t a hope of staying clear to the finish.

In order to instigate more action, our sports director asked if one of us would attack again and get the racing going.

When Casper (Pedersen) jumped clear, the GC teams blocked the road behind him again and, instead of more attacks, we had two riders out of four up front.

Weighing up the situation, I grabbed the microphone button under my jersey collar and squeezed.

“Guys, this is going nowhere ... now we’re just losing two riders for the day.”

Our sports director Matt Winston agreed and within a few seconds both Cees and Casper had sat up, leaving two guys doing a kamikaze ride out front as we refocused on the second part of the stage.

As we got closer to the 10km-long second-category Col du Béal after about 50km, Bora nailed it on the front of the peloton in an effort to get rid of Sagan’s competition if it came down to a sprint finish.

The lightning-fast descent that followed was horrible.

Badly positioned over the top, I found myself swinging off the back of the bunch doing 30-second sprints out of each corner to try and stay in contact with the wheel in front of me. It was so fast I was actually dying for the next climb to begin.

When it did go up again, I can’t say I recovered because it was bloody hard, but I fought to be near the front going over the top of the next two climbs as we had another really long descent after the third one.

By then, we had covered about 95km and the pace was so frenetic that none of us had taken bottles on board. I was dying of thirst, so when the feed zone came in the valley below, 10km later, I gulped two bottles down.

Ten minutes later, Joris (Nieuwenhuis) went back to the car and I drank another two bottles, but I couldn’t satisfy my thirst, so I went back for more.

When the sprinters group gave up the chase behind, I was hoping Sagan’s men would be happy and our group would slow down for a while, but they never did.

We all knew we weren’t going to beat Sagan if it came down to a sprint, so the plan was to just keep attacking on the hilly run-in and try and win the stage.

With my stocks replenished and the two escapees being sucked back into the peloton, my job was to keep the guys in position to launch an attack on the last climb.

So I rode in front of them from about 40km to go, sheltering them until the bottom of the climb, where, as soon as I swung over, Tiesj (Benoot) kick-started our assault and attacked with 11km left.

Having eased up, I pulled out my earpiece to get a break from the noise and the mayhem on the climbs.

I didn’t know what was going on up ahead as I rolled in towards the finish. When I got to the line I looked up at the screen and saw that Soren (Kragh Andersen) had won the stage. I was absolutely ecstatic.

At this time in my career I’m still pretty strong, but it’s great to be able to play a role in the Tour with young guys who are capable of winning stages here.

There was a great vibe on the bus after the stage, where I found out that Soren had attacked 3km from the finish and held on for his first – and our second – Tour stage win.

While we had planned our moves, paper is a much easier place to carry out a winning tactic than tarmac, and things don’t always work out.

Today, they did – and it’s pretty cool.

Sunday, September 13 – Stage 15: Lyon to Grand Colombier (175km)

ANOTHER glass of champagne at dinner last night to celebrate Soren’s win had us all in good spirits going to bed ahead of another tough day in the mountains. With two first-category climbs and an Hors Catégorie summit finish at the ski resort of Grand Colombier coming in the last 70km, today’s stage was always going to be a day for the GC contenders to test each other.

For my Sunweb team, though, the plan was to try and recover from yesterday’s efforts and just get to the finish within the time limit.

Everyone has different tactics when they are trying to have an easier day. Some sit up relatively early on the first big mountain, but then have to ride a pretty hard tempo for the rest of the stage in order to stay inside the time limit.

Others try to get as far as they can in the safety of the peloton before easing their way to the line – although that’s much easier to do on a flat day than on a day like today.

Last weekend, when we hit the high mountains, a big breakaway group had gained 14 minutes before the real climbs even started.

All of the sprinters were really worried that, as they were already 14 minutes down before the toughest part of their stage even started, they might not make it inside the daily time cut.

I could hear some of them chatting about it around me and wondered why their sprint teams hadn’t just ridden behind the breakaway and kept them closer until we got to the climbs.

Well, this morning that happened.

When the break went, the Belgian Lotto-Soudal team of Caleb Ewan were first to react and the escapees were kept at five minutes until we hit the first mountain.

I tried to pace myself over the climbs today, but those last 70km were brutal. I went a bit deep on the 11km-long first-category climb after 100km, hanging onto the peloton until about 4km from the top.

When we hit a 22 per cent gradient a kilometre later, I was riding a tiny gear of 36x30 for the first time on this Tour, but still could only manage 6kph on the incline. I actually thought I might be quicker walking up it, but crested the top of it in a group of six.

The 15km descent that followed was very bumpy and the road vibrations agitated my crash wounds, so it was a nightmare.

My arm is a clean cut, so that didn’t hurt, but the road rash on my back and knee were stinging like hell as the sweat of the climb combined with the warm breeze and rough surface of the descent to inflict more pain.

We rode to catch a bigger group on the next climb, before I completely backed off on the grind to the summit finish.

I rode up the 17km mountain with former teammate Wout Poels and, after a time check of about 20 minutes at the bottom, we knew we could lose another 15 minutes and still be safe to start the next day.

When I got to the top, though, I had barely changed into a warm top when the big grupetto of sprinters arrived.

With an 18km descent back to the buses, today was another long day on the Tour, and we now have a two-hour bus transfer to our new hotel.

Last week, we made a bet with the bus driver. He said if we won a stage he’d buy us a Magnum ice cream for the drive to the next rest-day hotel. We’ve won two stages since then, so I’m enjoying the drive so far.