With great success comes even greater scrutiny. Fresh from a 2017 season that yielded Giro d'Italia victory and a rainbow jersey, these days Tom Dumoulin can scarcely make it as far as his local supermarket without it becoming an event of sorts. The Netherlands had been waiting a long, long time – 37 years, to be precise – for a Grand Tour winner, and so it was perhaps only to be expected that Dumoulin would attain level of celebrity more usually accorded to the nation's footballers.
"I'm not used to being recognised, you're not always private anymore," Dumoulin said in Berlin on Thursday, where he was the centre of attention in the rather more formal setting of Sunweb's 2018 team presentation. "You have people asking you things even when you don't want it. You cannot choose when to take an easy moment in a restaurant or something."
One suspects that Dumoulin would gladly bear that hardship if it meant being relieved from one of the other, tacit duties of the cycling champion. Since winning the Giro, he has found himself being called upon with increasing frequency to be a de facto spokesman for the peloton, but even before that triumph in May, he was already well aware of the weight his words carry in an age of social media and instant takes.
ADVERTISEMENT
When Dumoulin voiced his scepticism about Bradley Wiggins' therapeutic use exemptions (TUE) in 2016, for instance, his opinion travelled further, more quickly and made more headlines than he might ever have anticipated. With that clearly in mind, Dumoulin seems reticent in the extreme to pass judgement on another Sky rider, Chris Froome, whose positive test for salbutamol on the 2017 Vuelta a España was revealed in December.
"My first reaction was 'that's absolutely terrible' and it is for cycling. It's absolutely terrible," Dumoulin said carefully to a scrum of reporters in the Umspannwerk Alexanderplatz, before outlining why he was reluctant to enter into an analysis of the specifics of the case.
"I said some things in the past about Wiggins and things about races – not necessarily about doping – but always when I stood out for my opinion, it backfired, I got stress from it. Journalists weren't happy with one answer, and the next time something came out, you all quote me again for my reaction. It only caused me stress, I never had a good feeling about it."
Froome a possible rival at Giro d'Italia despite positive test
Giro d'Italia's controversial start in Israel
A hesitant spokesman
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://ift.tt/2E6oVu4
No comments:
Post a Comment