The Giro continues without Tom Dumoulin. The Dutchman from Jumbo-Visma came to the Giro with ambitions, but also doubts. Those ambitions soon took a serious blow and Dumoulin also started to struggle with his back. After a tough start to the 14th stage, the 2017 Giro winner stepped down.
Dumoulin was counted among the outsiders in this Giro, but race followers also put many question marks behind his name. In the Hungarian opening weekend, the time trialist failed to take the pink jersey from Mathieu van der Poel.
And on the 4th stage to Etna, Dumoulin immediately fell through the ice. He was not good at that. He didn’t know what was going on, other than the fact that the hard work wasn’t paying off as he hoped.
He shifted his focus to daytime success and was a bit happy that he could help Koen Bouwman to victory in stage 7 as a fellow escapee.
Over the past few days, his back started to play up. Today he was unable to follow the peloton in a sharp opening hour of a tough ride up and down. So he called it quits.
Team Jumbo-Visma made a short announcement: “Tom has been struggling with his physical condition in recent days, hence the assignment.”
Dumoulin: “I’m up and empty”
“The tank is empty. I don’t really know what to say about it at the moment,” says Dumoulin. “This is very disappointing. I can’t kick power without it hurting. The form is simply not there. I currently have no answer to the question of why that is.”
“I noticed that I didn’t have the best legs in this Giro. Nevertheless, I was determined to finish this lap and finish together with the rest of the team in Verona. I wanted at least the necessary race kilometers on the legs to get.”
“I boosted myself every morning to make the most of it, but I simply can’t do that. The body is currently exhausted.”
Dumoulin is now going home to “give the disappointment a place”. “After that, we’ll see further,” it sounds.
