A FORWARD STEP
The cycling world was shocked when Tom Dumoulin announced an indefinite hiatus from cycling, citing the pressure of the sport. Procycling asks: is cycling doing enough to look after it athletes?
The best time for Tom Dumoulin to take an indefinite break from cycling was, probably, quite a while ago. But the second best time is now. Dumoulin went to January’s JumboVisma training camp in Alicante as a professional cyclist. He left it as an ordinary member of the public. He’d dutifully jumped through the hoops, announced his plans, smiled for the cameras, pedalled his bike. He would ride the Tour de France as part of the Jumbo trident with Primož Roglicč and Steven Kruijswijk - a “shadow leader” as he described his role. There’d be a foray into the cobbled classics, which the cycling world might have rationalised as Dumoulin trying to freshen things up. Belgium in April is as good a place to rediscover one’s mojo as any. And beyond the Tour: the Olympic time trial. It looked like it was going to be a good year for Tom Dumoulin, racing cyclist - a Tour with two flat time trials, a good chance of an Olympic medal, and the interesting prospect of an underrated one-day racer going into events like the Tour of Flanders alongside Wout van Aert, perhaps even playing Stijn Devolder to Van Aert’s Tom Boonen.
Just a day after announcing his programme, he made another announcement. He would be taking a break and stepping away from cycling. Plans had suddenly changed.
On the surface of it, it was a surprise, though mainly insofar as this rarely happens. Professional cyclists are often perceived as living the dream, and if they are not, they are usually moving so fast there isn’t time to reflect on the fact. The next training session, race or airport lounge is never more than a day away.
The rider spoke in a video of two different Tom Dumoulins. There was Tom Dumoulin the cyclist, but there was also Tom Dumoulin the man. Mind-body dualism has been preoccupying philosophers since the Pre-Aristotelians in 400BC, but it’s a concern for professional cyclists too. He described a moment in 2017 when he “became Tom Dumoulin, the great Dutch cyclist”. As a reasonably successful rider in the years before he won the Giro d’Italia, he attracted a certain level of interest from the public and media, but he realised things had changed when he got back home with his pink jersey and found journalists waiting at his house. It seemed he was fine being a cyclist, but being a champion created an imbalance between what he felt he had to give, or could give, and what other people expected him to give.
Dumoulin cited pressure as one of the reasons for his decision, but he’s always seemed quite good at handling the pressure. There’s always been the sense that he finds it all a bit ridiculous, which is as good a coping strategy as any. He’s smart enough to know that all this doesn’t really matter, and he’s often spoken of finding the hero-worship slightly absurd. The fans came in their thousands to clap for him, but, he once noted, nobody claps when a doctor saves a life.
The Dutchman is a favourite with many journalists. He’s reflective and talkative, and treats interviews as a conversation, rather than a game of dodge-the-question. At a press conference during the 2018 Tour de France, he got involved in an extended chat with a Dutch journalist which did away with the usual onequestion-one-answer format. Normally, other journalists might be irritated at one questioner hogging the time, but Dumoulin’s answers were so involved and interesting that nobody seemed to mind. We assumed that he was happy.
But we also knew something was up. There was the aborted journey in the direction of an altitude camp in the Alps in 2019, asking himself what the point was, when his leg was hurting from the crash which had taken him out of the Giro that year and doing a U-turn back to the Netherlands. There were the interviews in which he speculated on the possibility of walking away from cycling. The 420 days between races when his rehab period overlapped with the covid lockdown. And the 2020 Tour, in which he came seventh, but looked as if his morale was operating separately from his body, There’s an old saying in physical therapy: listen to your body’s whispers before it starts shouting. Dumoulin has been whispering to us for years that there’s something about being a professional cyclist that doesn’t quite sit right with him.
We fetishise mental toughness, don’t we, as cycling fans? Until we realise that to do so is to miss the point. The reaction to Dumoulin’s news was mostly supportive, though a few couldn’t resist a bit of cod psychology, hinting that he was taking the easy way out, or expressing fauxregret, along the lines that the furnace of elite sport is no place for heat-sensitive individuals, without realising that the harder thing to do sometimes is walk away.
This is not to say that mental toughness doesn’t come in useful, or that it shouldn’t be applauded. It’s just that sometimes our perception of it helps create a gulf between our expectations of athletes and their ability to cope with what life is throwing at them.
Pro cycling has changed. It has always been a physically and mentally exhausting job, and the irony is that the mental health of the athletes is taken more seriously now than in the past. But modern training, a deeper talent pool and a lot more coverage, along with social media providing 24-hours-a-day chat about the riders, have turned the sport into a pressure cooker. The season starts with an explosion of intensity at the Tour Down Under and continues into October. Riders have to be perfectionists, switched on at all times - training more effectively, eating more prescriptively, resting to a degree that prevents space for fun and racing harder. Dumoulin described cycling as a moving train, and no wonder some riders want to get off.
Dumoulin’s decision was followed by an interview with Thibaut Pinot in L’Équipe, in which the Frenchman stated similar worries, describing cycling as a lot less fun than it used to be. Stress has rushed in to fill every gap of every day. Instead of relaxing in the team bus before the start of a stage at the Tour, Pinot said that they are looking at maps, bullet-pointing the day’s strategy and worrying about crosswinds.
The question is, what duty of care does cycling and its stakeholders - teams, journalists, fans, the UCI and sponsors - have to its protagonists? When we put young men and women in a situation where pressure is always added to, but rarely dissipated, there will inevitably be casualties, and the sport needs to get better at acknowledging that, mitigating it and helping riders who are struggling.
Of course, there are all kinds of pressures, and more fixes than we have time to apply. Short contracts are a source of chronic, or even acute stress - a rider can often be an injury and a few months off
the bike away from losing their livelihood, and most riders on the men’s side and all riders on the women’s side need to find work relatively soon after retirement.
A life as a professional cyclist is not conducive to most people’s ideas of a settled family life. There’s the constant travel, and when a rider is at home, the specialised diet is not much fun. And it’s part of the job description to lie on the sofa when not training, which is suboptimal for chores and places a burden on a rider’s partner. Fans criticise riders on social media - water off their backs for many riders, but for the introspective or pessimistic rider, this can't be easy to deal with. We do the same as journalists. There’s nothing more annoying than an armchair fan pontificating on social media about our shortcomings as reporters, then we do much the same to pro cyclists.
The paradox is that sometimes these pressures are harmless. It’s fine to point out that objectively a team has made a tactical mistake, or tried something and failed. Some personality types thrive on the pressure of being a professional cyclist - the ex-rider and coach Brad McGee once observed of Fabian Cancellara that he absorbed stress and converted it into forward motion. And after all, there is going to be a degree of pressure involved in high-level sport that is followed by millions. Many of us have experienced nerves when sitting an exam, or pressure from a busy week at work. Imagine that, only being among the best 200 or so in the world at what you do and having to perform appropriately and very publicly. Where we have a responsibility as a sport, however, is developing the knowledge and sensitivity to know how to deal with riders who are not thriving, and that starts with getting better at not making assumptions.
The good news is that Dumoulin looked happier giving that interview about leaving cycling than he has in years. He described the feeling as if he’d been carrying a backpack of 100kg, but that it had slipped off his shoulders. He looked more enthusiastic about his plans - to talk, call people, think and take the dog for a walk - than about any race he’s started in a long time. He described the decision as giving himself the opportunity to think, but it looks like he’s already been thinking for some time.
Cycling will miss Tom Dumoulin.
The question is, will Tom Dumoulin miss cycling?
Modern training methods, a deeper talent pool and a lot more coverage, along with social media providing 24- hours- a- day chat about the riders, have turned the sport into a pressure cooker