Chronic Knee Injury
In 1986 at a six-day event with UK professional Tony Doyle at Paris-Bercy, Roche crashed at speed and damaged his right knee. This destroyed his 1986 season at new team Carrera-Inoxpran with little to show other than second in a stage of the Giro. Roche finished the 1986 Tour de France 48th, 1h 32m behind Greg LeMond, a Tour that Roche described as like "entering a dark tunnel" of pain.
The injury and then associated back problems recurred throughout his career (for example in the 1989 Tour Roche retired after banging the problem knee on his handlebars) and a series of operations appeared to only address direct or consequential symptoms of the core injury. Later non-surgical intervention under Dr.Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt in Munich made some difference but the injury required constant care.
By the end of his career Roche was unable to compete at his best because of back problem which led to a loss of power in the left leg. In retirement he described riding the 1993 Tour de France "just for fun". He finished 13th, riding for Claudio Chiappucci).
Read more about this topic: Stephen Roche
Famous quotes containing the words chronic, knee and/or injury:
“Adder-faced singularity
Espouses a nailed-up childhood,
Skin-disease pardons
Soft horror of living,
A gabble is forgiven
By chronic solitude.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Facts are ventriloquists’ dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)