Nicolas Roche was one of the victims of the Thursday’s stage dramatic finale, as all his hopes for a top result in the general classification of this year’s Giro d’Italia were crushed on a slippery roads beneath the Montecassino climb. In shock after hitting the deck, the 29-year old Irishman spent some time laying on a ground before he eventually remounted his bike and finished the stage with over fifteen minutes loss to the maglia rosa holder, Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEDGE).

Tinkoff-Saxo team wanted to keep all their possibilities open as long as possible, lining up in the Italian grand tour with two appointed co-captains. However, while Rafał Majka managed to get off the ground quickly and remount Jay McCarthy’s bike to cross the line in the first chasing group brought home by Wilco Kelderman (Belkin), Roche wasn’t equally lucky and the highly unfortunate incident forced him to revise his plans for season’s first three-week event.

Escaping without suffering any major injuries, apparently Roche tries to look on a bright side of recent happenings, pointing out that many riders weren’t equally lucky as their romance with this year’s Giro was ended abruptly on the slippery roundabout two days ago.

"I hit the head pretty badly so I had a bit of a shock on the neck but it’s nothing major, just that and the usual skin off the ass and the knee," Roche told Cyclingnews as he pedalled to sign on in Frosinone.

"It’s unfortunate but it’s part of the game. It could have been even worse, when you look at Purito [Joaquim Rodriguez], whose Giro is over with broken bones. So now I’ll look on the bright side and I’ll try and do my work for Rafal, who was able to save the day yesterday, and I’ll try and hit a few breakaways if possible."

The 29-year old Irishman also claimed that while he is still able to continue, his main goal for the remaining two weeks of the Italian grand tour would be to ride in the support of Majka, now the sole Tinkoff-Saxo leader, who sits fourth in the general classification, 1:25 off the maglia rosa.

"The team did a brilliant job to get Jay McCarthy’s bike to Rafal pretty quickly and he was off. It took me that bit longer to actually get up and at that stage, new bike, old bike, it didn’t make much of a difference, I was just KO," Roche explained.

"The plan now is to do my work for Rafal – he’s going to have a great chance for a top five and hopefully for a podium. I think he’s in top shape," Roche said. "Beyond that, I’ll try to be smart and find the right breakaways."

While Thursday’s mass-crash started a discussion about the BMC team behavior in the finale, Roche was more interested in explaining reasons of the incident, pointing out to slippery sufrace and undemanding mountaintop finish inserted at the end of a long flat stage, forcing all strong teams to fiercely fight for a position on narrowing road.

"When you have a mountaintop finish like that and everyone is still pretty fresh, I think the way the stage was set up yesterday was useless. You cannot have 200 riders arriving at a corner at the bottom of a climb on WorldTour level," he said. "If they had a climb prior to that like they usually do, it would be a different story. I just didn’t see the purpose of it. I think the crash was just due to the rain rather than anything else, but was it really necessary to do 250k in the flat for a five kilometre climb? I’m not quite sure."