In the end, Nicolas Roche was greeted with cold water rather than champagne in Vejer de la Frontera after stage 4 of the Vuelta a España. His late attack ahead of the uphill finish looked set to land him victory, but the stage would prove to be 100 metres too long and he would have to settle for fourth.
Rather than enjoying the acclaim of the crowds from the podium, Roche would end his day sitting on the road just past the finish line with just his soigneur for company, pouring water on his face. In time, a group of reporters gathered around the stricken Roche, who managed to arrange his tired grimaces into a smile as he rose gingerly from the tarmac to speak with them.
“Today I thought I’d chance it, you know,” Roche said, now sitting on the top tube of his bike. “These are the types of finishes that I usually like and I thought I might as well make the most of my form on these types of finishes at the start of the Vuelta.”
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Roche swooped across to Samuel Sanchez’s wheel with a shade under two kilometres to go when the former Olympic champion attacked ahead of the short descent that preceded the final uncategorised haul to the line.
Once the gradient began to bite once again, Roche rid himself of Sanchez, and though the peloton was closing rapidly, it appeared for time as though the Irishman had enough in reserve to hold on for the win and perhaps even take the red jersey of race leader to boot.
As eventual stage winner Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) started their sprints in the final 200 metres, however, Roche was swept up and he had to settle for fourth place on the stage. He remains in third place overall, 15 seconds down on Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge).
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