For the past couple of years, Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) has quietly pulled out the occasional strong performance in the high mountains yet repeatedly downplayed the prospect of testing his credentials as a Grand Tour rider at this early stage in his development.
"I won’t race for 10th place on GC," the Dutchman told Cyclingnews in Estepona earlier in the week when asked about his overall prospects at this Vuelta a España, though, in hindsight, the proviso was instructive: "It needs to be either really good or else I’ll just save myself a little bit."
Dumoulin was certainly not sparing himself on the wickedly steep slopes of the Alto de Puig Llorença, also known as Cumbre del Sol on Sunday afternoon, as he caught and passed no less a figure than Chris Froome (Sky) in the final 100 metres to land stage victory and reclaim the red jersey of race leader.
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Nine days into this Vuelta, and with two category 1 mountaintop finishes behind him, Dumoulin lies almost a minute clear of the rest atop the overall standings, after matching – and even surpassing – the pre-race favourites on the short, sharp climbs that have been the feature of this first week. It begs the question – what’s next?
"I don’t know," Dumoulin smiled in the mobile press conference truck past the finish line. "I had no GC ambitions coming into this Vuelta and now I’m really there. I’m at the top of GC and it would be stupid to let it go. But we’ll have to see in the big mountains. We’ve had mountaintop finishes but no real mountain stages with a lot of climbs on the stage yet. We’ll just have to hang onto this jersey and we’ll try to defend it as a team and then we’ll see."
Attack dislodges race leader
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