December 9, 2009 (Montreal, QC) – Stephen Roche, the Irishman who in 1987 won the Triple Crown of cycling (the Giro, Tour de France, and Road Worlds) gave an informal talk at the Auberge des Gouverneurs downtown on Thursday evening. He recounted what brought him into professional cycling, talked about some of his career highlights, spoke at length of the training camps he runs on the Spanish Island of Majorca, and proudly showed photographs of his son, Nicolas Roche (Ag2r-La Mondiale) who finished 22nd at the 2009 TdF. Roche spoke mainly in French until someone asked him to please respond in English because they wanted to hear his Irish accent.

As a teenager the Irish cycling star was delivering newspapers by bicycle in his native Ireland when he was noticed and asked to ride with a local club. He soon was part of the Irish national team and began pro racing in France in 1981. Just before the 1981 Tour of Corsica, race officials there mistook him for the driver of Scottish cyclist Robert Millar. Roche went on to win that race, beating Bernard Hinault.

“It was tough when I left my family and went to live in France, not even speaking the language,” recounted Roche who now speaks very good French. Roche, who just turned 50, told stories of austere living and hard training in his younger days.

Luck of the Irish?
Roche attributes much of his 71 career victories to good tactics, being able to bluff, sometimes being discounted or even ignored by competitors, and some to good luck. Fortunately for him, many of his major victories were raced on cool, rainy weather days (the kind of weather an Irishman excels in) and he insists that the number 13 has repeatedly brought him good fortune.

When he described his training camps in Majorca, Roche had the crowd chuckling about the dynamics of making both a husband and wife enjoy a cycling vacation. His formula – that addresses the needs of both – seems to be a winning one. He stressed the importance of locating such training camps on a paradisiacal island. Majorca fits this bill and yet is within easy reach of many Europeans. Lucie Nobert of EKILIB Travel later admitted that the Spanish Island is more difficult for Canadian tourists to visit, but offered some suggestions for how to do it. For more info visit www.ekilib.com

Roche told Pedal that since retiring in 1993 he now lives in France and runs a 27-room hotel near Nice. He still likes to get out on his bike whenever he can. This is not the first time that he’s visited Montreal as he attended the men’s 1989 Road World Cup but had to forfeit because of an injury sustained after riding around the Gilles Villeneuve Race Track; his daughter also previously attended Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, QC.

The free Roche presentation was organized by the Mardis Cyclistes de Lachine races and by EKILIB Travel, which specializes in bike and hiking trips. Marc-Wayne Addison of the Mardis group introduced Roche. Also helping organize the talk was Max Vives (Planet Energy).

There was a striking difference between the recent visits to Quebec of Roche and another TdF champion, Lance Armstrong who visited Quebec in September 2009. While Roche was easily accessible, Armstrong was under considerably tighter security.