dumoulin’s team eye giro as route revealed
Tom Dumoulin’s Sunweb team are looking at another shot at the Giro d’italia title after the 2019 route, which includes seven summit finishes and three individual time trials, was unveiled last week.
Kicking off with an ITT in Bologna for the Grande Partenza on May 11, the three-week race climaxes with a 15km solo test in Verona.
Although there are 58.5km against the clock, more than twice the time trial allocation of the 2019 Tour de France, they include two with significant uphill finis1hes.
Much of the climbing in the route has been backloaded into the final week and the highest mountain featured will be the Gavia Pass at 2,619m, with the Mortirolo also included on the same day, stage 16.
Dutchman Dumoulin was expected to target the Tour de France in 2019. However, that may not be the case, according to Sunweb directeur sportif Luke Roberts.
“Having more time trial kilometres at the Giro makes it quite an attractive proposition to Tom.”
“We will start to analyse that and look at both parcours.”
But Roberts, speaking to Cycling Weekly from a team training camp in the Netherlands, believes Dumoulin has shown the ability to win a Grand Tour no matter what the course. “Tom has ridden the time trial as his strength but has shown he can climb really well,” Roberts said. “And I think he is capable of winning a Grand Tour even with fewer time trial kilometres.”