Just before he drew his season to a close in October last year, Tom Dumoulin signalled his intention to target the Tour de France in 2019 and skip the Giro d'Italia altogether. He had ridden the Giro three years in a row, and he felt the time had come to switch priorities.
However, his plans quickly changed when he saw the routes that the organisers had planned for the two races. The Tour de France would be a three-week festival of high altitude, while the Giro d'Italia would offer a much more varied race that was punctuated with three time trials.
Although he still intends to ride the Tour in July, the Dutchman has no regrets about coming back to the Giro for the fourth year running.
ADVERTISEMENT
"I love to go there, and we made that decision last winter, and I'm sticking by it," Dumoulin tells Cyclingnews.
Dumoulin is speaking at Team Sunweb's hotel for the Ardennes Classics on the outskirts of Maastricht, his hometown. As he has done since the 2017 season, Dumoulin used Liège-Bastogne-Liège as his final tune-up race ahead of the start of the Giro. After a long stint of training at altitude, it was a good chance to test his legs at race speed before the big event.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and Dumoulin has almost done a copy and paste job on his early calendar for this season, with a few minor tweaks. The UAE Tour has replaced the Abu Dhabi Tour, while Strade Bianche has been removed altogether. With almost identical programmes, it's easy to draw comparisons from year to year.
Fight for pink
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/tom-dumoulin-i-can-name-five-riders-who-could-win-the-giro-ditalia
No comments:
Post a Comment