{"id":276922,"date":"2026-02-02T14:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T14:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/276922\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T14:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T14:29:08","slug":"former-pro-cyclist-nicolas-roche-beaten-up-by-three-men-in-barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/276922\/","title":{"rendered":"Former pro cyclist Nicolas Roche beaten up by three men in Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former pro cyclist Nicolas Roche has been beaten up by three men who tried to steal his watch during a street mugging he has described as the \u201cbiggest fright\u201d of his life.<\/p>\n

The 41-year-old son of legendary Irish cyclist Stephen Roche was attacked as he left a restaurant in central Barcelona.<\/p>\n

Recounting his horror experience on Instagram alongside a photo of his broken timepiece, the French-born Irishman, who rode professionally between 2005 and 2021 for seven different teams, said: \u201cJust been attacked and beaten up by three men as I walked out of a restaurant in central Barcelona trying to rob my watch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to my girlfriend and the two security agents from the shop further down the street, I managed to not only save my watch but mostly stopped the attackers from beating me more.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s crazy to think that someone in the restaurant must have warned the gang to wait outside for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had read about all of this in the news, but it\u2019s something else to experience it. The biggest fright of my life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I was shocked was that for over five minutes people stood there watching as I was on the ground, as my girlfriend was shouting for help until eventually the two security guards came out to scare the thieves away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saying he was hoping the nearby shop camera would help catch the culprits, Nicolas said in a follow-up message to his 140,000 Instagram followers, showing off the injuries he had suffered: \u201cThankfully, only\u2019 a few cuts on my face and a bruise on my elbow.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarta got a hit behind the head trying to protect my head on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cStill finding it hard to believe what happened. Be careful, everyone is going out.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear this morning if any arrests have been made.<\/p>\n

Barcelona is notorious for its mugging problems.<\/p>\n

In August 2024, Ben Ainslie revealed he had been robbed of his \u20ac20,000 Rolex at knifepoint by a Barcelona watch gang.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Donald<\/p>\n

World<\/p>\n

Donald Trump threatens to sue comedian Trevor Noah over Grammys Epstein joke<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The most successful Olympic sailor of all time was in the Catalan capital ahead of qualification races for the America\u2019s Cup.<\/p>\n

Roche took twelve victories during his professional road racing career, including four titles at the Irish National Cycling Championships and stage victories at the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a in 2013 and 2015.<\/p>\n

He represented Ireland at the Olympics on four occasions between 2008 and 2020.<\/p>\n

In October 2022, Roche set up his own gravel cycling team, NR GRVL, and in May 2023, he took a third-place finish at the UCI Gravel World Series event in Nannup, Western Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former pro cyclist Nicolas Roche has been beaten up by three men who tried to steal his watch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-276922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}