Roche has no regrets in missing Tour de France maillot jaune

Nicolas Roche may be a very proud Irishman, but his and his family's links with the Côte d'Azur are many and long-standing. A Monaco resident whose parents both have homes in nearby Antibes, Roche went into Tuesday's Tour de France team time trial knowing he would take the yellow jersey on what is effectively home ground if his Saxo-Tinkoff team won the test.

Peter Cossins has written about professional cycling since 1993 and is a contributing editor to Procycling. He is the author of The Monuments: The Grit and the Glory of Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races (Bloomsbury, March 2014) and has translated Christophe Bassons' autobiography, A Clean Break (Bloomsbury, July 2014). 

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