Nicolas Roche: 'I scrubbed the gravel out of my wounds in the bus shower'

Friday, May 27, Stage 19: Pinerolo to Risoul (244km)

Russia’s Ilnur Zakarin lies in a ditch after crashing during the Colle dell’Agnello downhill on stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia (Getty Images)

Nicolas Roche

As today was the penultimate mountain stage of this year's Giro, it was really important that we got riders into the breakaway's this morning to have any chance of winning the stage.

As we were due to finish on the 12km-long first-category climb to Risoul, the plan was to get our best climber, Basque rider Mikel Nieve, up the road today.