with directeur sportif Patrick Valcke. He supported Roche in the 1989 Giro d'Italia which was won by Laurent Fignon with Roche finishing ninth. Kimmage was planning on ending his professional cycling career at the end of the 1989 Nissan Classic which ended each year on O'Connell Street in Dublin but after Roche had to withdraw from the 1989 Tour de France, Kimmage withdrew and subsequently gave up as a professional. Controversy Kimmage always struggled with injury and he retired with no wins, blaming systemic doping in the peloton. In his book Rough Ride he talks of taking amphetamines in a post-season exhibition race, something that was common practice at that time in cycling; criterium results were often staged, with a win being guaranteed for the biggest name or local hero. Journalism and publishing Books In May 1990, Kimmage published Rough Ride, detailing his experiences as a domestique which included references to drug use, including his own. Kimmage admitted to using amphetamines to ride non-controlled criteriums on a few occasions, and caffeine suppositories, but says he stayed away from more powerful and dangerous drugs that other cyclists were using. Kimmage wrote a biography of Matt Hampson entitled Engage: The Fall and Rise of Matt Hampson. It was published in August 2011. It won the 2012 British Sports Book Award in the Autobiography/Biography category, and went on to win the overall best book award in all categories. It was shortlisted for the 2011 William Hill Sports Book of the Year, despite not being longlisted. It was however awarded the 2011 William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year. Press Kimmage had been a sports journalist with the Sunday Independent in Ireland. He left for The Sunday Times soon after an incident in 2002, when the newspaper misrepresented an article he had written about Roy Keane in the wake of the Saipan saga involving Keane. The editors had taken a quote from Keane out of context to run a headline that implied Keane was planning to leave his wife. Kimmage has been a long-time friend of David Walsh, author of the controversial doping-in-cycling book L.A. Confidentiel. In 2012 Kimmage was laid off from The Sunday Times. He has claimed that the loss of his job is related to his reporting on doping in cycling. Because many of his doping and cycling stories were rejected by the paper's lawyers, he was unable to get