Following a season where Daniel Martin finished ninth in the UCI WorldTour rankings and Nicolas Roche took his first WorldTour race victory, Irish cycling received a further boost this evening when Roche was given a major award.
The 27 year old was honoured at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards in the RDS in Dublin, taking the Best Sports Book honours for his Inside the Peloton autobiography. The book, which was written with Irish journalist Gerard Cromwell, builds on Roche’s popular diaries for the Irish Independent newspaper and has received a very good reaction thus far.
A honest and frank account of his experiences of the peloton, he has written about the highs and lows of his career thus far, and enabled the reader to get closer to professional racing.
The award win saw Roche edge out several heavyweight contenders, including Paul Kimmage’s Engage, Ronnie Whelan’s Walk On and others.
Speaking before the ceremony, he said that he had his fingers crossed that things would play out well. “Hopefully it works out all right and makes the trip worthwhile,” he told VeloNation. “I was at the training camp with the Ag2r La Mondiale team in Montgenevre and asked if I could come back for the awards dinner. They said it is fine…I am missing two days, but it is okay with them.”
It certainly will be now, with one of their top riders scooping a major publishing award and looking set to sell many more copies of his book.
Watch a video interview of Roche speaking about Inside the Peloton here:
More later….