Known for his many places of honour, Nicolas Roche finally won a stage race overall when he defended his lead on the final day of the Route du Sud. Having celebrated this maiden victory, the Irishman was pleased to get a confidence boost ahead of the Tour de France.

Nicolas Roche was in an excellent position of defending his overall lead of the French stage race, Route du Sud in today’s 179 kilometer long final stage from Saint Gaudens to Castres. With a time gap of 45 seconds to Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and with teammate, Michael Rogers in 3rd place, everything seemed to become a huge Tinkoff-Saxo overall success in southern France.

8 riders formed the first and long-lasting breakaway of the day but as the terrain started to rise, the group was divided in two and in the finale, they were reeled in by the chasing Tinkoff-Saxo riders. However, Adriano Malori (Movistar) slipped away from the speeding bunch and he won the stage a few seconds ahead of a big group including Tinkoff-Saxo’s Nicolas Roche who thereby won the French stage race demonstrating impressive form before taking on Tour de France.

It was a very happy Nicolas Roche commenting on his win:

"It was a magnificent feeling crossing the finish line taking my very first GC win after three days of very hard racing. It was enjoyable experiencing my teammates so dedicated and determined to support me and of course, this is their victory as well. Surely, this was a confident booster before taking on the Tour de France in a couple of weeks so obviously, I'm looking forward to it."