Stephen Roche is analysing this year's Tour de France on Eurosport, 10 years after he wore the yellow jersey on the final stage down the Champs Elysees. Earlier this week, Frenchman Richard Virenque was making a descent on the 192-km, 11th stage from Andorra to Perpignan. "You can see the way he's coming down he's not committed," said the former champion of the man hurtling down mountainous bends faster than the team cars could manage. Virenque then looked back over his shoulder at the chasing riders.

"He should keep going. To hell with everyone else. He shouldn't be looking back for his team."

For a moment, Roche was in the saddle. It was what he would have done - did do. A decade on and his Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and World Championship treble is still seen as one of the greatest achievements in cycling. Only the great Eddy Merkyx has ever done the same.

The blue-eyed boy

It was on the route to Canazei, cycling towards the five cols, that Roberto Visintini's aggression took grip. The Italian dropped back to where Stephen Roche and his Carrera team-mate Eddy Schepers were trailing at the back of a leading group. Roche believed that Visintini had been waiting for them and at last had decided to help rather than hinder his progress in the 1987 Giro d'Italia.

As Roche and Schepers drew alongside Visentini, he veered severely to one side, forcing both riders to slow down. Roche believed it to be an accident. Moments later Visintini did the same again. Roche barely got round him and Schepers had to put out his hand to prevent himself from falling. They immediately realised that their own man was trying to put them both over the side of the mountain.

Roche drew up alongside Visintini, placed his hand on the handlebars of his rival's bike and asked him what he was doing. The Italian candidly replied that he was trying to take them out of the race and, in addition, the next time he would put his fist through Scheper's face. Roche decided that he could do only one thing. He threatened the Italian. He told him in no uncertain terms that if either he or Schepers went down during the race Visintini would definitely be coming with them.

After the stage a journalist asked Roche and Schepers if it was true that Roberto had tried to put them out of the race. Roche, not wanting to make things worse, replied that it was untrue, that Visintini was just steering badly and that it was an accident.

A television station then asked Visintini whether Roche's explanation was accurate. He replied: "No it's not. I tried to put them on the ground and the next time I'll use my fist instead."

Roche's crime was that he had dared to take on local hero and joint race leader Visintini. The Italian had won the 13th, timetrial, stage to San Marino by more than two minutes and had set himself up nicely for overall victory.

Roche had led the race for the first 10 days, despite the indifference of his Carerra team, had lost the jersey and then controversially won it back at Sappada when he saw an opening, broke from the team against orders and raced to victory. It had taken the rest of the Carerra team 20 miles to reel Roche back, but by that time Visintini was broken and only able to finish sixth. Roche's tactics drew widespread opprobrium from the public.

At the end of the following day's racing to Canazei, Roche arrived at the finish covered in sweat, dirt, wine, phlegm and the fruit seeds people had been spitting at him. When he crossed the line he was pushed, punched and insulted by an increasingly angry crowd which kept up the vitriol to the end of the race at Como.

At the Como finish, a tight four-kilometre circuit, tens of thousands of people lined the route. Every so often there were groups shouting 'Roche the bastard', 'Roche go home'. As the laps increased so did the volume of abuse.

"People were pulling me, some saying `bravo', others shouting at me. Mostly obscenities. Fucker, cunt and that kind of stuff. And there was no one to take me from my bike. I was shattered. People continued to punch and push me and I could feel the tears coming," he said in his book The agony and the ecstasy.

The tone of Roche's first major victory of 1987 was one of defiance. How he survived it provided a counter point to the cheese-peddling, sweet, blue-eyed boy that Ireland knew and was coming to love. To win the Giro, Roche had to beat every rider in the race. He had to defy his own team, his manager, the team sponsors and the Italian public.

He had to accept insults, threats, physical assaults and the deep resentment from everyone bar his family and two loyal colleagues. That's exactly what he did.

Le petit Roche et le grand coeur

In March 1981, the youngest ever winner of the Paris-Nice classic put up his feet in a Nice hotel and said that, despite pressure from his sponsors, he would not go for the Tour de France that year. At 21, Roche was showing that he knew his mind. "Le petit Roche," as they were calling him, had put down a marker, but he wasn't yet ready for the marathon.

In '87 his mind was equally well-adjusted. No longer "Le petit Roche", he had the Giro win behind him and was now one of the Tour de France favourites. He knew that his main rival was going to be the Spaniard Pedro Delgado and probably Frenchman Jean Francois Bernard.

The early leader was Bernard, but Roche was of the opinion that Delgado would break him in the mountains. He was right. Having taken the yellow jersey early in the race, Bernard cracked in the Alps.

Roche made his first bid for prominence on July 10th in an 87.5 km time trial which he won to move into sixth place overall. He took the leader's yellow jersey at Villard de Lans after the 19th stage, only to lose it the following day to Delgado in the grueling climb at Alpe d'Huez.

It was at Alpe d'Huez that Roche considered for the first time that the race might be beyond him. Delgado was unmatchable in the climbs with his economical, light frame and took a 25-second lead at the summit. Roche believed that the most he could afford to concede to his Spanish rival was 20 seconds. Any more and he had doubts that the timespan could not be bridged in the following stages. The next day's climb to La Plagne was expected to enhance Delgado's lead even further, by as much as a minute. Roche was in deep trouble.

There is one image of that day in the Alps which crystallises Roche's greatness. The moment transcended his panache and ability on the saddle. It overshadowed his tactical awareness and his style on a bike. It was part of his class.

It started with Delgado breaking half way up the mountain and the cameras following. It continued with the commentator telling us that we were now probably watching the overall winner pulling away, with Roche falling back down the winding throat of La Plagne.

What was going on in the Irishman's head? What was he thinking? Where did he find the energy to take his body to the limits and beyond - into the physiological danger zone? What instinct allowed him shut down the physical messages that his body was sending to his head? What feral reaction took him up the mountain after Delgado? What told him that this is where he might win the Tour de France?

Barely had Delgado crossed the finish line when Roche turned the final corner. In the crowd's frenzy for the stage winner, Roche was momentarily forgotten. When he came into view, around the last painful bend, it was a jarring image. Deep in oxygen debt, he crossed the line and collapsed from his bike into semi-consciousness. He was just four seconds adrift. On the ground, an oxygen mask was placed over his mouth and, at that moment, Roche, straining for air, became heroic. We were able to see the truth about this Irish cyclist; his savage determination with a will to win that was shocking.

No point in having an inside track if you don't run on it

They were the days of bald eagles and publicity stunts, of city councillors calling for the Tour to begin in Dublin and Bord Failte running ads in Le Monde. Charlie Haughey's favourite maxim - there's no point in having an inside track if you don't run on it - transported him to the VIP podium on the Champs Elysees, shoulder to shoulder with French premier Jacques Chirac.

When Roche crossed the finish line in Paris, the Taoiseach stepped out to embrace the champion. They both smiled for the television cameras of the world. Roche then rolled long tears down his cheeks through the dirt and the grime. There was no wrong he could do, nothing else to prove.

He simply moved on to gild the lily. With a Tour and a Giro in his back pocket, his season was complete, his sponsors smiling, his bank balance the size of Alpe d'Huez.

He moved on to the World Championships in Villach, Austria. It was barely six weeks since the Tour, three months since the Giro and on the day of the World Championships, the Eddy Merkyx record of the Triple Crown wasn't in his mind.

This time out Roche was plying a different trade. He was up there as domestique. He was in Austria for Sean Kelly. Martin Early and Paul Kimmage were there, too. An Irish team hoping to get an Irishman on the podium. They were there to put their shoulders to the wheel of Kelly's effort to become champion of the world.

It stopped raining after 10 laps. The race began in the final two. When the bell was sounded for the final circuit 70 riders took off and gaps appeared. Roche ground the pedals up the hill at the beginning of the course with Kelly on his back.

He was trying to put the bulk of the specialist sprinters under pressure with a sustained drive. When he looked behind at the top of the hill there were less than a dozen riders with him. In one burst, he shook off 60 hopefuls. Things were looking up for Kelly.

There was one rider, Argintin, who could possibly out-sprint Kelly if it came down to it at the finish. The others saw the Irishman as the main threat of the group and, fraught with tension, attacks began exploding from all points. Roche covered some, Kelly covered others. The group remained intact. Everything pointed to a sprint finish. Roche had done his job.

With barely three kilometres to go there was another attack, this time from the Danish rider Sorensen. Four riders moved up to cover the move and hauled him back. Roche was one of them. He looked over his shoulder, anxious that Kelly bridge the gap as quickly as possible, but noticed that he was stalling. Argintin and Kelly were having their own private battle of bluff and nerves. They both feared each other so much that neither would make the move.

Roche knew that if he stayed at the current pace he would be out-sprinted to the tape, certainly by Goltz and Van Vilet. At best he'd have an outside chance of taking the bronze medal. He looked back again and became angry at Kelly having landed him in the dilemma. He decided that he couldn't wait. There were only five riders, the finish was approaching and he felt that his legs were fresh. He had the inside line.

Five hundred metres out Roche attacked for the World Championship. "It was all a mistake," he told the press afterwards.

Two years later, on the eve of the 1989 Tour de France, Roche spoke of his strengths as a cyclist. It wasn't the endurance of pain that took him up La Plagne, or the overall cycling pedigree that gave him a World Championship he wasn't looking for. It wasn't his ruthless streak as a competitor or his single minded nature that won him the Giro.

"Delgado will be watching me, in particular," he said. "Delgado knows that I am one of the cutest riders on the tour, that if I'm back to my '87 form I can calculate my race very well and he will never catch me out.

"He knows that even if I'm a little bit behind I will keep cool. I am always capable of doing something like pulling back a seemingly impossible deficit and appearing from nowhere.

"On longer stages I can keep in touch with the climbers over four or five cols by pure endurance, not getting blown out and by keeping up a steady rhythm. He knows I can stay in touch right through the last climb of the day."