Tom Dumailin By the time Dumoulin targets the Tour GC fully, he will be on the wrong side of 30
For an ordinary cyclist, finishing second at the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France in the same season would be seen as a monumental achievement, and yet for Tom Dumoulin, was 2018 a missed opportunity? The Dutchman’s progression as a grand tour contender had been steady; he finished a breakout sixth in the 2015 Vuelta, but in 2016 despite starting the Giro and Tour he abandoned both after the time trials, instead concentrating his season on the Rio Olympics. Then he won the Giro in 2017 and looked set to be the rider who was able to mount a legitimate challenge to Sky’s Tour reign.
Instead, Dumoulin chose to return to the Giro in 2018 to defend his title, and then go on to the Tour. What if he had put all his eggs in one basket, and aimed solely on the top spot in Paris that year?
Dumoulin is a man made for the Tour. He’s the virtuoso time triallist with a world-class diesel engine for the mountains, a rouleur in the mould of Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome. In 2018 in France, he was compromised by his exertion at the Giro, and instead of winning a grand tour, two separate Sky riders, Froome in Italy and Thomas in France, managed to put him in second on two occasions. A combination of crashes, parasites in his gut, and all round bad luck put paid to his 2019 campaign, meaning that by the time Dumoulin targets the Tour de France GC fully and solely for the first time, he will be the wrong side of 30.
Dumoulin has had a cool, no-rush attitude to the Tour, but now events outside of his control have prevented him from mounting a serious challenge at cycling’s blue riband event. Focussing on other things first, whether that be the Giro, the World Championships, or the Olympics was a viable strategy while he still could aim for the Tour in the future. However, with the prospect of two lost years now a realistic possibility, he might regret not challenging for the maillot jaune sooner.
Dumoulin’s victory in the Giro, where he held off the challengers in the mountains and relied on time gains in time trials, built on a precedent from the 2015 Vuelta a España, where he came within a few stages of shocking everyone by winning in Madrid.
That introduced the world to the style of Dumoulin - those long legs smoothly powering away, never looking in trouble, even when dropped by rivals and left without team-mates, even when heading up the steepest roads in Europe. In 2017, Dumoulin gained four and half minutes on Nairo Quintana in the two time trials, and three minutes on Vincenzo Nibali, meaning he could
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afford to simply limit his time losses in the mountains, rather than panicking and blowing up on the road. Repeatedly in the final week he was dropped, and isolated, but didn’t alter his pace and steadily clawed time back. He kept his cool and kept the upper hand, even while losing time. He might well have repeated the effort at the Giro 2018, if it wasn’t for Froome’s ridiculous escape on stage 19, where he gained three minutes on Dumoulin after the Dutchman hesitated in the chase to wait for back-up.
Crucially, at the Tour, he can match rivals such as Froome and Thomas in the TT (he beat both in the TT in 2018), and should have the upper hand over last year’s winner Bernal against the clock, too, to employ the same tactic he has against the likes of Nibali and Quintana at the Giro. While Thomas was in the form of his life in 2018 and had the upper hand in the mountains, Dumoulin lost more than half of his final deficit to the Welshman (58 seconds) due to a puncture on the Mûr-de-Bretagne stage.
Dumoulin is a modern cyclist - good looking, outwardly confident and
courteous with the media. Perhaps this is why such high expectations have been set for the Dutchman, because he has become an easy person to interview; the go-to man for a reliable quote, while also dealing with the pressure of the entire Netherlands to become the first since Joop Zoetemelk to win the maillot jaune in 40 years. He’s not afraid to voice his opinion on sensitive topics, either, unlike some of his contemporaries. When his former domestique Georg Preidler was caught up in the Austrian blood-doping investigation, Operation Aderlass, he said he was “very surprised I’ve been asked about it so little”, as well as saying, “It was terrible,
I felt betrayed.”
A palmarès with a Giro, two further podiums at grand tours, a time trial World Championship and an Olympic silver medal on it is nothing to be ashamed of, and yet it feels like Dumoulin could still do more. When the world of cycling returns to normal, the Dutchman will be involved.