Stephen Roche shoots messenger over Chris Froome suspicions

Irish cycling legend Stephen Roche says if Chris Froome didn’t have such good self-control there’d be a lot of journalists with broken noses at this Tour de France.

The 1987 winner of the race believes the media have been way too harsh on the race leader and his Team Sky squad, one of whom is his own son Nicolas Roche Jnr. Has been the victim of taunts and insults from spectators at the Tour ever since Froome took the yellow jersey a week ago, with many observers questioning whether the latter is clean or not.

“Irrespective of my own son being involved the abuse is totally uncalled for,” blasted Roche Snr.

“I think cycling fans are fans of the athletes and it’s very unfortunate they’re are having this negative reaction but once again, you have the journalists to blame because they’re writing all kinds of stuff with no foundation and sensationalising things.

“Also, you have certain TV commentators and ex-cyclists, even these guys who weren’t exactly clean themselves, throwing doubt over the performance of Chris with no foundation at all and making baseless arguments.”

Roche was also critical of those who blamed Nicolas for Team Sky not winning the team time-trial stage nine of the race.

“There were nine men started off and only five finished,” fumed Roche.

“If you really want to point a finger then point it at Geraint Thomas.

“It’s a team effort; the riders have their jobs but Geraint Thomas put in an incredibly hard effort with 1.5km to go.

“Nicolas was on his wheel, Geraint opened a gap, Nicolas needed to close that gap, do his relay and then Chris Froome comes around him, so anyone that knows anything about cycling or has been in a team time-trial knows what it’s like. It was an impossible task. He’d ridden flat-out for 27km so it’s very hard to go hard on him.

“I think he was a credit to himself because of how he hung on for so long.

“Four got dropped before him? People are forgetting that. He struggled on camera for the last 100 yards but it’s not for Nicolas to take the blame.

“He did some incredible riding before that and he wasn’t expecting Geraint to go as hard as he did. He (Geraint) wanted to do one last do-or-die effort and strung everybody out.

“But accelerating like he did put Nicolas in trouble, it was very hard for him to recover from that effort in such a short space of time.

“It was a team effort and they lost by half a second. End of story.”

Today’s 17th stage of the race takes the riders into the heart of the Alps with a 164-kilometre stage from Digne-les-Bains to Pra Loup. There are five categorised climbs with the final one being a six-kilometre ramp to the finish.

Froome leads overall by 3:10 from Nairo Quintana (Movistar) with American Tejay Van Garderen (BMC Racing Team) clinging to third a further 22 seconds back.