BORMIO MILAN
There were surely more graceful descriptions of the drama that befell Tom Dumoulin in the shadow of the Stelvio on stage 16 of the Giro d’Italia, but none were more memorable than the succinct synopsis offered by his Sunweb team-mate Laurens ten Dam when he wheeled to a halt at the finish in Bormio. After wiping some of the grime from his face, his features crinkled into a smile as he listened to a reporter’s opening question. “I think you all saw what happened on television, right?” Ten Dam said softly. “He had to shit.” Nobody does plain speaking quite like a Dutch sportsman.
Over Ten Dam’s shoulder, Dumoulin was on the podium being helped into a fresh maglia rosa. He had entered the final week of the Giro with a lead of 2:41 over Nairo Quintana and with portions of the Italian press employing some suggestive adjectives to underscore his astonishing level of performance to that point. For Il Corriere della Sera, for instance, the Dutchman was “a placid Frankenstein, too monstrous to be true” though Dumoulin downplayed the idea that his probity was being questioned. “I don’t think that they think like that,” he said on the last rest day. Dumoulin’s toilet stop at the base of the Umbrailpass suggested he was human after all, though his subsequent lone pursuit on the mountain and successful defence of the pink jersey left Quintana, Vincenzo Nibali et al wondering if there was any way to slay this particular beast.
The curious semi-inertia that descended over the group of favourites after Dumoulin disappeared into the bushes was ultimately a microcosm of the closing days of this Giro. Movistar and Bahrain-Merida seemed confused as to whether or not etiquette required them to stop and wait for Dumoulin. By the time they made up their minds and begun to race again, Dumoulin was already engaged in his spirited solo fight back. Come the finish, the worst of the crisis had been tempered and he still had 31 seconds of his overall lead. Movistar’s approach to solving the Dumoulin conundrum appeared to be especially muddled. On the Stelvio stage, Quintana’s lieutenants Winner Anacona and Andrey Amador were dispatched up the road on the Mortirolo, but the anticipated late onslaught from their leader never arrived. “We wanted to create a bit of chaos,” Movistar
The semi- inertia that descended on the favourites after Dumoulin disappeared into the bushes was a microcosm of the closing days
manager Eusebio Unzué said, but despite his team’s strength in depth, they only ever fleetingly discommoded Dumoulin.
For much of the final week, both Quintana and Nibali gave the impression they were counting on the road to perform the heavy lifting for them. Dumoulin, they seemed to conclude, was the strongest man in the race, and trying to chip away at his advantage was a fool’s errand. They instead banked on their powers of endurance, and the forlorn hope that Dumoulin would run aground during the three successive days in the high mountains that preceded the final TT in Milan. Or, as Thibaut Pinot’s coach and brother Julien put it: “I think the only way Dumoulin can lose is if he cracks.”
The Dolomite tappone to Ortisei, which squeezed five mountain passes into just 137km of racing, seemed precisely the sort of day on which Dumoulin’s supposed limitations as a climber might manifest themselves, but Nibali and Quintana’s probing on the Passo Gardena came to nothing. Frustrated by the race leader’s maddening implacability, they then shook off Dumoulin’s entreaties to help him shut down Pinot’s smart move in the finale. Dumoulin gave his response after the stage, intimating he would be pleased if Nibali and Quintana both missed out on a podium place. “They are trying to make me lose, instead of trying to win.”
Such candour is increasingly rare among Grand Tour contenders, though, in a boost to the Giro’s hitherto anaemic polemica count, Nibali saw fit to match it. “I have never been that cocky. He needs to talk less. Does he know what karma is? What goes around comes around…” said Nibali on the steps of the Bahrain-Merida bus, the cadence and pitch of his voice rising in agitation. More telling, however, was the refrain that punctuated his invective. “It’s not easy,” Nibali said on four separate occasions. The man for the long road knew that he was fast beginning to run out of it.
So it proved, even if Dumoulin’s joursans at Piancavallo the following afternoon, where he lost 1:07 and conceded the pink jersey to Quintana, at least ensured the closing weekend would not be devoid of suspense. Quintana, Nibali and Pinot dutifully attacked on the Giro’s final ascent of the Foza, but they discovered that Dumoulin had allies of his own, with Bob Jungels, Bauke Mollema and Adam Yates all helping him manage the deficit on the rippling plateau before the finish in Asiago. Dumoulin being Dumoulin, he was disarmingly frank about their collaboration. “They are pretty much fixed on their spots on GC, so it was definitely to help me,” he said. A mere 53 seconds separated the top four riders ahead of the last stage, a 29.3km time trial into Milan, but the tight margins were deceptive. Barring disaster, Dumoulin would leapfrog three places in the overall standings and win the Giro. On the final Saturday, even with Quintana in the maglia rosa, Unzué was already fielding questions about where it had all gone wrong for the Colombian. The bar has been set high. “Nairo didn’t have the same sharpness he’s had in the past,” Unzue conceded as he stood by the Movistar bus, “but the level of the favourites has been very even.”
Dumoulin gave his response after the stage. “They are trying to make me lose, instead of trying to win”