Stephen Roche became the greatest Irish cyclist of all time when he joined Eddie Merckx as only the second rider in history to win the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and the World Road Race Championship in a single year – achieving the unique triple in 1987.

His Olympic career began at Moscow 1980, where he finished 45th in the road race in a performance he later described in his autobiography Born to Ride with characteristic candour: ‘I went to Moscow and flopped.’

From Dublin, Roche’s amateur career had been exceptional: at nineteen he became one of the youngest winners of the Rás Tailteann in 1979 and finished third in the Tour of Ireland. In February 1980 he joined the ACBB club in Paris – one of the great cradles of professional cycling in France – where his Paris-Roubaix and Paris-Reims amateur victories signalled his extraordinary talent.

But his Olympic preparation had been undermined by a shift in priorities: the quest for a professional contract was eclipsing the Games as his target. The Moscow road circuit was artificial with banked corners – ‘not my kind of circuit at all’ – the heat and humidity suited him least and he never felt well during the race.

Team manager Peter Crinnion observed that he had never seen anything to match the power of race winner Sergey Sukhoruchenkov, suggesting even Eddie Merckx in his prime might have struggled to match it. Roche went on to sign with the Peugeot professional team and the rest, as his 1987 season confirmed, was history.