Climbing to glory in the Alps

He remembers it like it was yesterday. The date was July 22nd, 1987, and to millions of television viewers the sight of a comatose Stephen Roche on a stretcher, wrapped in a silver blanket with an oxygen mask hiding his face was frightening and deeply disturbing. It was the end of the 21st stage in the Tour de France, the greatest cycling race in the world, and Roche had dug into reserves of mental and physical endurance no one thought any human possessed. The 185 km stage from Bourg d'Oisans to La Plagne took in the highest Alpine ascents of the race, with riders reaching speeds of 70 kph in some downhill sections and risking life and limb in the quest for glory.

Roche did more than that; it was the day he effectively won the Tour. After the previous day's stage up L'Alpe d'Huez, a tortuous journey with some 22 zig-zag bends, the Dubliner had remarked: "I just don't have the legs to climb with the best . . . I'm racing to my limit all the time, I'm not a pure climber." Pedro Delgado had just taken the leader's yellow jersey out of Roche's hands, and people were already hailing the Spaniard as the new champion.

The 21st stage took the cyclists on a roller-coaster ride through the Alps and, midway through the final 16 km ascent, Delgado's lead over Roche had widened to over one minute. "It was all part of my tactical plan," recalls Roche. "My plan was to fight back with five kilometres to go, when Delgado wouldn't be getting any information."

So, with that last hellish climb to the stage finish, Roche set out to, as he put it, "blow my brains". The effort was herculean. When Roche came around the final corner, he could actually see Delgado ahead of him. The difference in time at the stage's conclusion was a mere four seconds, which - combined with a 10-second penalty for "unauthorised feeding" - put him 39 seconds behind Delgado in the overall classification.

What followed immediately after the stage finish was terrifying. Journalists who had been ready to pounce on Delgado, assuming him to be the next winner of the Tour, rushed to the Irishman. He didn't even have time to get his feet out of the toe clips, and he was surrounded, denied the oxygen that his body required after his superhuman finish.

He collapsed and was unconscious by the roadside for half an hour. "It was frightening," he says, "and I remember it clearly because I watch it on video all the time. At one stage, someone said, `Stephen, can you move your legs?', but I couldn't move my limbs. Then they said, `Blink, if you understand us', and I did. It was a frightening experience."

That night, instead of eating in his hotel room, Roche insisted on going to the hotel restaurant. Rather than take the lift down, he walked. "I could hear them saying how pale I looked, that I was a great guy. Someone told me that what I had done made me the moral winner, even if I didn't actually finish the next stage."

Roche's plans were more brazen than that. "My plan was to attack," he says, knowing that the time-trial in Dijon, the so-called "race of truth", on the penultimate day, was edging ever closer.

The 22nd stage into Morzue, given what had happened the previous day when he was stretched away in an ambulance, was remarkable. Roche finished second to Eduardo Chozas and reduced the deficit on Delgado to 21 seconds. "It's now mano a mano," said Roche at the time, fully aware that the pendulum had swung his way.

Indeed, Roche took the overall lead from Delgado in that decisive time-trial - and, in a marathon of 4,200 kilometres, the 40-second advantage secured in that race of truth was immense. The final day's stage into Paris was like a victor's march and Roche achieved his "childhood dream". The secret? "I was there every day," remarked Roche, pointing to his consistency in the most mountainous Tour de France since the second World War.

Nowadays, Roche - who co-owns a hotel in Nice, in the south of France, and who has a successful cycling holiday business in Majorca - looks back on his Tour success and admits that he "appreciates it more than any time".

"To cycle up the Champs-Elysees, the most famous street in the world after O'Connell Street, and to be the last one out with all the roads closed, was incredible. There is something else I appreciate now more than ever too, and that was having the Taoiseach, Charlie Haughey, stand on the podium beside me. At the time, it didn't mean a lot to be honest. But, in hindsight, whatever the motive was, I do appreciate it."

The win was notable for another reason too. Roche became only the fifth rider in history - following Fausto Coppi, Eddie Mercx, Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault - to add the Tour de France title to the Giro d'Italia in the same year.

For good measure, later in the season, the Irishman also won the World Championship.

One that rankles a bit with him, though, is that he finished second to Ben Johnson in the vote for World Sports Star of the Year. The following year Johnson was banned for drug taking. "It would be nice to have World Sports Star of the Year on your curriculum vitae," says Roche, "but in my own mind, I do."