Dumoulin gets off in the fourteenth stage of the Giro | cycling

His team reports that the Limburger has “physical problems”. It would be back pain.

Dumoulin was already out of the picture for a good classification. He had already lost a lot of time in previous mountain stages and was 31st in the general classification, almost twenty minutes behind leader Juan Pedro Lopez. Before the Giro, there were already doubts about his physical condition.

For Dumoulin, winner of the Giro in 2017, it was his first major cycling tour since the autumn of 2020. He was out for a few months at the beginning of last year due to motivation problems that followed a long period of injury. After his return, he focused on the Olympic time trial. In Tokyo, Dumoulin won silver behind his Slovenian teammate Primoz Roglic.

Dumoulin appeared at the start in Hungary two weeks ago with doubts. These originated in a moderate spring in which, after a training camp in Colombia, he was unable to keep up with the climbers in the UAE Tour uphill, received corona and had to quickly dismount on his return in the Tour of Catalonia. After an inconspicuous performance in the Amstel Gold Race, he went on an altitude training course in Tenerife. Dumoulin says he got better every day there. “But I don’t dare say whether I will participate for the classification. It’s been a while since I did that,” he said before the start of the Giro in Budapest.

Helpful helper

Dumoulin finished third in the time trial in the Hungarian capital – the second stage – but was already not satisfied with his level. Three days later he had to let the classification men go on Etna. Dumoulin turned out to be inadequate uphill, but a few days later he was a useful helper in a breakaway that gave his teammate Koen Bouwman the stage victory. But also in the climb to Blockhaus, last Sunday, it became clear that he could not join as a climber.

His goal was to win a stage, in which the longer time trial on the final day was explicitly considered. It won’t get that far.