Tom Dumoulin has looked back at his hugely successful 2017 season, revealing how his major victories at the Giro d’Italia, the BinckBank Tour and the World Time Trial Championships all boosted his confidence one after the other, confirming him as one of the sport’s biggest stars and a likely multiple Grand Tour winner in the years to come.
Dumoulin turned 27 in November and is entering the peak of his career. Team Sunweb have already confirmed that he will target the Giro d’Italia in 2018 before considering riding the Tour de France. However he is in no rush to focus fully on the Tour, preferring to wait until the moment is right and the course perhaps suits him better.
Dumoulin is intelligent and balanced; he is skilled at keeping external expectations under control. He continually plays down his own hopes but then celebrates and savours the moment when he exceeds them. He said he was hoping for a place on or near the podium at the Giro d’Italia but went on to wear the Maglia Rosa for nine days, win a time trial and a mountain stage to beat Nairo Quintana by 31 seconds despite losing two minutes after his famous toilet stop on the descent of the Passo Stelvio.
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He became the first Dutchman to ever win the Giro d’Italia, with his successful 2017 season earning him the title of Dutch Sportsman of the year.
“I’d hoped to finish as close as possible to the podium but it would also have been satisfied with seventh place. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d win the Giro d’Italia,” Dumoulin told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf in a personal review of his season.
Dumoulin describes his time trial world title in Bergen as his best day of 2017. The three weeks of the Giro d’Italia, was more of a learning process about his own ability and a roller coaster of emotions. The highs included chasing down Quintana and then winning on the climb to Oropa, followed by the anger and disappointment of losing time to his biggest rivals on the stage to Bormio due to his improvised toilet stop.
Stronger than ever going into 2018
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