The Irish former world champion cyclist has lost his holiday business, his villa in the south of France, pension, investments and many of his closest associates. Does he have any regrets?
The Irish cycling great has lost his holiday business, his villa in the south of France , pension, investments and many of his closest associates, but he says there is still another chapter to writeThese are some of the same places where Roche announced himself to the cycling world in 1981, including when at age 21 he arrived, drenched in class, from theThe plan is Roche will let me know when he’s on route from Grimaud, to aim for around 5pm. It’s about two hours after that when my phone rings.
He appears slightly smaller than anticipated, his piercing blue eyes set against the soft Mediterranean tan of his face and neat silver-white hair. He admits he’s a long way off his once racing-fit physique, but then he turns 65 next month. One thing Roche hasn’t lost is his charm, or his curious enunciation of words, as if he’s speaking English to a foreigner.
“Morally, it was difficult to pick up the pieces. I think I was always an athlete, number one, not a businessman. When I retired from cycling, 30 years ago, I was in the same situation, had to start from scratch again. I have to kind of re-enact some of the same mentality, otherwise I’d be still down there,” he says, pointing to the ground.
Roche shakes his head to say he’s never read it. My ploy to broach this subject is to tell him how, after texting a friend to say I was in the south of France to meet Roche, he replied with a one-word message: “Druggie”.“Of course it’s difficult, but there’s nothing you can do about it. At the same time, if people took the time to read everything about the Conconi case, they would see there’s nothing there. It’s a big smoke but there’s no fire really.
“That’s why I never got involved in any conversation around doping, because it wasn’t something that concerned me.” “Well, I met Conconi once only,” Roche says. “When I first went to Carrera, in 1986, they were using the University of Ferrera for medical tests, so I met him for the first and only time there.
“So later, I was back in his office again and I told Dr Müller-Wohlfahrt I knew what was in there. And he was shocked, and said ‘Stephen, I’m 40 years in this business. I would never, ever give anything if I thought there was something wrong with it.’ Stephen Roche: 'Why would I get into a programme at the end of my career, when nothing was riding on it?' Photograph: Carl Thomson
Three weeks after that news broke, Roche went on The Late Late Show, alongside Walsh, and the planned 20-minute segment ends up being extended to around 50 minutes by host Pat Kenny. He was banned from acting as a company director in Spain for seven years, although on appeal Roche got this reduced to two years, and his debts also reduced to under €400,000. It was still quite the fall from grace for a company that was once doing about €1.8 million in annual turnover.
Around the same time, Roche invested €120,000 with a friend in Paris who was building a new luxury car company. He also had a share in a site near Saint-Tropez, originally valued at €6 million, of which Roche owned 10 per cent. “I still don’t agree with it, but I’m settling for it . The problem was, I was totally negligent as to what actually was happening. A lot of people around me were close to me, I wasn’t really told ... someone should have grabbed me by the ear and said ‘Stephen, fix this’.”
Indeed, worse was to come, when Roche lost his hillside villa in Antibes, worth in excess of €1 million. “And this is coming out of Covid, no international buyers, so I found a guy who wanted a quick sale, I dropped the price ... meantime, the banks are charging me late repayment penalties, 10 grand a month. So I came out of it with my hat. It was really, really bad.”In 2022, in the middle of his financial crisis, Roche lost his father Larry and younger sister Carol within six months.
There was a little hut of a shop on the way back into Shankill and I stopped there, bought a bottle of Lucozade, three or four Mars Bars, sat there eating them all, and just thought, this is what I’m missingRoche has had breakdowns in relationships before, including his split and subsequent divorce in 2003 from his wife Lydia, who he married in 1980 and who is mother to their four children, Nicolas, Christel, Alexis and Florian.
“But I’m not looking for any sympathy. I still love the work, sharing the passion of cycling , still get a kick out of it. So there’s another chapter yet. There’s still a lot of stuff there that I couldn’t tell for the moment. To maintain credibility, and also some of my dignity as well. “But I’m not angry or upset with anyone. You make your bed, you’ve got to sleep in it. Nicolas, Christel, Alexis and Florian, they all have their own ideas of what happened but don’t really know, and someday when things finally turn around, I can sit down and tell them my side of my story.
“I was already earning good money at 16, in Premier Dairies, worked nights too, and had my own car at age 18. Then when I retired from cycling, for the first time there was no pay-cheque coming in. That was difficult to come to terms with, but what made it harder was, after I finished my last race, I had all these business cards in my pocket, from all these people telling me how great I was, how easy it would be to find a job.
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