By: Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor
IT’S been 32 years since StephenRoche brought home cycling’s Triple Crown in 1987 – three epic victories in the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and the World Road Race Championship. His Tour de France victory – the first and, so far, only one by an Irishman – is etched on the nation’s pysche. That feat made him one of Ireland’s most treasured sports heroes.
When we meet – at the 5-star Kempinski Hotel in the centre of Budapest – he is dressed in a sharp tailored suit and opennecked Hugo Boss shirt. He is in a different arena now, facing a new challenge – one he appears determined to overcome – though his creditors have run out of patience.
Hundreds of miles away in Spain his cycling tourism business – which until recently generated millions each year – has imploded. Creditors – owed as much as €600,000 – have gone to court accusing Roche of fraud and of having gone on the run to avoid his obligations.
He has been advised he may be arrested if he returns to Spain. Aged 59, he looks healthy, tanned and fit – every inch the celebrity superstar, turned millionaire businessman. But in the next hour he will well up twice, struggling to speak through overpowering emotion as he wipes tears from his piercing blue eyes.
‘I think when I look at it, a lot of the things I’m doing, I’m doing out of panic,’ he says.
‘From the outside everything looks comfortable. Nice clean shirt. Everything looks clean – very like television ‘But I am 60 this year This domain now is totally new – even though I’ve been in business for years. This is hard. A bit hard to deal with. This legal thing has totally blown me away. I never imagined that it was going to be like this – so severe. I thought I had an open dialogue with everybody. It’s not as if I started business two years ago and took the money and ran away. I’m 25 years in business.’
Roche began organising cycling holidays in Majorca more than two decades ago via his Spanish firm Shamrock Events SL. Since then the firm has brought perhaps 20,000 guests to hotels during the island’s off-season when temperatures are better suited to cycling.
‘We were doing it for the passion,’ he says. ‘I won’t say we were really making money but we lived comfortably off it.’ ‘In 2016-2017 we had a turnover of €1.8m – which for six months’ work is not bad.’
He says perhaps 10% was profit and that he always ‘reinvested rather than taking money out’. But in 2017 things started to go wrong. And in December 2018 he was asked to vacate the Ponent Mar Hotel where he had maintained a base for years.
Court records in Spain confirm that at the beginning this month the owners of the Ponent Mar and another hotel – the Hotel Son Caliu – petitioned the courts for the involuntary bankruptcy of Roche’s firm. This case involves unpaid debts of €392,446.94.
A previous case taken by another creditor – World Spry Services – saw Roche accused of criminal fraud and the concealment of assets. Roche found the €30,000 to settle this case before it hit the international headlines.
But he can’t hold the tide back any more. He still owes – at a minimum – €600,000, much of it dating back to 2017.
As he tells it there are multiple reasons for his current predicament. Firstly in 2017 he put a €50,000 deposit on a €300,000 unit in Palma. This was to be his new base in Majorca.
‘My idea was to have a cycling cafe. I could have my office, a bike station, do merchandising There would be a massive car park at the back where I could have a meeting every morning with cycling groups.’
The unit was trading as a food outlet called ‘Pie in the Sky’ – an irony he may not appreciate. But Roche – who was waiting on the sale of a property investment in France – could not find the funds to complete the purchase.
‘In the end the guy got p***ed off with me and said he can’t hold it any longer unless I paid him. I couldn’t pay him. I was waiting for the sale of my site.’
The site Roche was trying to sell overlooks the bay of St Tropez in the south of France. It’s a development site for 18 houses worth €6m of which Roche says he owns 10%. His stake is worth €600,000 – the approximate amount of his debts.
The majority owner is a developer in the South of France. While the sale of the site has been agreed, there was a problem. ‘The buyer had his mortgage agreed by the bank but the notary noticed an error in the land registry.’
Negotiations with local officials in France are ongoing but even if the sale proceeds Mr Roche says ‘it will be another three, four, five months before anything is paid out’.
Unable to secure his new unit in Majorca, Roche then suffered another financial setback in France where he had invested €120,000 in a luxury car sales business.
‘I was getting 10% of turnover – sometimes more – and I had my own car, my insurance and whatever car I wanted – a [Porsche] 911 a Cayenne – you know. All I had to do was ensure that if the guy had a buyer that the car was back.’ But in 2017 two Porsche Panameras, a Porsche Cayenne and a Porsche 911 were stolen.
‘There was an insurance claim because the garage door wasn’t up to standard so we went against the owner of the garage hoping to win our money back and we ended up losing the case.
‘We lasted until 2018 and in February 2018 we closed shop.’ Meanwhile, Mr Roche’s cycling business was frequently unable to pay its debts in Spain. ‘It happened quite regularly but I was sure that the site [in France] was going to go. That’s why I was very open with the people I owed. I even sent them photographs and the deal for the sale of the site. I sent them everything. I said, “Look, this is going to happen. It’s mine. You see here – Stephen Roche – €600,000. It’s there so you will get paid.” Maybe I had my head in the sand because I was always sure the site was going to get me through it.’
But then he was asked to leave his base in the Ponent Mar Hotel – meaning he could no longer take bookings. His cashflow was gone. He had to return booking deposits.
‘I had nothing to work with anymore.’
There have been personal setbacks too. His 19-year-old son Florian, who battled leukaemia as a child, relapsed in May 2018.
Although Florian ‘is doing great now’, last year his illness was ‘a very serious mental shock’ to Roche.
Then Roche’s daughter Christel, who was managing his Spanish cycling business, then left the firm. ‘She got a bit p***ed off with the situation and because she was close to her brother, she went to help her mum look after Florian.’ ‘That was very hard,’ admits Roche.
Asked about the allegation that he has acted fraudulently or traded recklessly Roche becomes animated. ‘I cannot for the life of me imagine how they could say such stupidity. They put me out of my office.
‘I even offered to work for them for nothing. They know I brought 700 to 1,000 clients a year when nobody was there. So they know the potential I have for bringing in people.’ So how is he managing now from day to day? ‘I have to keep going,’ he says.
Now – 40 minutes into our meeting – it all becomes too much and tears well up. For a minute or so he cannot speak as he fights to regain control of his emotions. ‘There are some friends who help me as well,’ he begins before struggling to complete the sentence.
‘Friends that I probably have let downfriends and family.’ Then he regains his composure.
‘There are certain people who helped me – who did a lot to help me and once again I was promising to pay them back at a certain time and I couldn’t do it.’
Family helped you as well – your parents?
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he nods. ‘I kind of hardly ever see them either – which also hurts. I’m so engrossed in trying to get things going and in the last couple of months I’ve been afraid to fly because of the situation – you know – so I have been driving everywhere.’
You’re literally afraid to fly because you think you’ll be arrested?
‘Well, people said so many things. It’s hard to get proper advice, not knowing the whole amplitude of the situation so it’s difficult.’
This has meant repeated 14-hour drives between Geneva and Budapest where he is working on new projects that he hopes will offer a fresh start – and help him repay his debts.
For now the projects are in a delicate stage and cannot be discussed publicly. Any negative press about Roche may see new partners baulk.
Are the new projects property related?
‘No, no, no,’ he backs away horrified. ‘It’s what I do best – it’s cycling.’
Meanwhile, his problems in Spain – where his lawyer has asked for €15,000 before he can act – appear to be getting more serious.
As he points out, ‘If I had €15,000 I would pay my suppliers.’
This lack of representation has left Roche largely in the dark about the legal processes in train against him, though he says he is not hiding from anyone.
‘Anyone can find me. I’m not hiding from anybody. My email has been the same for 25 years. I’ve been getting notifications – yes, which I haven’t read because I don’t understand them – they’re all in Spanish. When I sent it to the lawyer last week, he said, “Don’t open it.” But he won’t start the case going because he needs €15,000. So I’m in a sticky situation.’
Then there’s the shame. That’s tough to face up to.
‘I have distanced myself from most people – because of embarrassment. I have no credibility because I cannot say I’m doing this I cannot say, I can pay you I cannot say anything I can’t tell them what I’m doing and these people have heard it all before.’
Have you thought about bankruptcy?
‘I’ve thought of it – but no. Because the people who’ve helped me are going to lose out. That’s why it hurts now the way things have gone because I have been very upfront with the people I owe money to, and when I hear that I’ve run away or I’m trying to get away without paying – that’s not me. Never.
‘I could go bankrupt and start again but morally I couldn’t do that Just out of respect for the people who helped me.’ For now it appears Roche is going to continue battling and he still believes he can pay all his debts back.
‘Life is full of obstacles and you’ve got to fight to get over them,’ he says. ‘I’m not a bad person. It’s just that things got out of hand and the people coming after me are maybe more financial than emotional.’
Between the open neck of his designer shirt, a gold medal of St Christopher hangs. Roche never takes it off and sometimes touches Turn to Page 8 ?? From Page 7 it almost unthinkingly as he speaks, his hand drawn repeatedly to it.
There’s a touching story behind the medal, one that dates back to his early days in the sport. Back then, he was an impoverished young Dubliner plying his trade as a rider in the French pro cycling circuit. On one ferry journey between his native south Dublin and his adopted home in France, he fell into conversation with an elderly couple who were on their way back from Lourdes. They were hoping for a miracle cure for the wife’s cancer.
Six months later – after Roche’s first big win in the Paris-Nice race made the papers – the elderly man appeared at Roche’s parents’ house alone, his wife having died. He left his late wife’s medal of St Christopher for Roche, saying that speaking to him on the ferry had been her last moment of happiness.
Roche has worn the medal ever since.
When it was lost during a horrific 1986 crash in which a rider died, his teammates searched all night at the crash site but failed to find it. His then-wife Lydia replaced it with an identical one that he never takes off.
Telling the story now Roche’s eyes well up once more and he brings the medal to his lips. ‘It’s something that I never take off and it’s something that I have a lot of faith in.’
Roche says he’s not afraid of the challenge ahead and for now he’s determined not to go back with his hands empty.
‘I kind of feel, if I can make it better then I want to keep at it. I still believe I can make it better but I’m a little bit short on time.’
In the coming months he’ll need every ounce of luck that medal can bring.
