Roche and Martin on rise as Alps loom

Ireland’s two riders in the Tour de France, Nicolas Roche (Ag2r La Mondiale) and Dan Martin (Garmin-SHARP) enjoyed a solid weekend with Roche moving inside the top 10 overall while Martin displayed some good form on Saturday’s leg-breaking climb to the finish at La Planche des Belles Filles to finish 17th.

Roche is now ninth on GC, two minutes and 21 seconds behind race leader Bradley Wiggins (Sky) while Martin is further back in 69th, over 27 minutes down.

The first cousins will be glad to see the back of what has been one of the most stressful and crash-infested opening weeks in recent history and look forward to the steep slopes of the Alps this week, where both will be expected to challenge.