CYCLING:HAVING SEALED his place on the squad with his strong win in Sunday's national road race championships, Nicolas Roche was yesterday named as part of the final selection of the Ag2r La Mondiale team for the Tour de France. The 24-year-old son of Stephen Roche will make his Tour debut on Saturday's Monaco time trial, continuing the steady evolution of his professional career.

Roche will join his first cousin Daniel Martin (22) as part of the line-up, making it the first time in 17 years that two or more Irish riders have taken part in the race.

In 1992, Seán Kelly and Martin Earley were riding their final Tours, while Roche senior was making his second-last showing in the race. He competed again in 1993. Mark Scanlon was the only other participant since then. He completed the race in 2004, also as part of the Ag2r team, and helped two team-mates to stage victories.

Roche was, predictably, delighted with the news. “I am happy, very pleased to go,” he said yesterday. “These past few hours have been really good for my morale, with this news plus yesterday’s Irish championships victory. I was still a bit nervous until I got the official call – anything could have happened.”

Before the Irish nationals, Roche had said he was worried about a dip in form during the Dauphiné Libéré. While he was a fine sixth on stage two of the race, he didn’t climb as well as expected, and so the team sounded less certain about his place.

“My main doubt was that I didn’t perform as they wanted me to do in the Dauphiné. I was pretty sure about making the Tour team until that race, then I didn’t ride as I wanted there. I was tired from a training camp the week before.”

However, his national championship performance showed he was over that fatigue. Of the six Ag2r La Mondiale riders fighting it out for the remaining four places on the team, he was the only one to take a medal of any colour in the road race nationals.

Now he aims to show off his new jersey in the best way he can: by attacking and helping his team leaders. “My personal ambition would be to go for stages, of course,” he said. “We have Efimkin and Dessel for the general classification. I will probably be working for them and also try to go for breakaways and a stage win – that would be my goal.”