Tom Dumoulin shocked the cycling world when he announced he was taking a break from the sport. Photo: Jumbo-Visma
Former Giro d’Italia winner Tom Dumoulin shocked the cycling world today when he announced that, at the age of 30, he was taking a break.
The Jumbo-Visma rider, winner of the Giro in 2017 and runner-up in the 2018 Tour de France, said that those results had made him “Tom Dumoulin the great Dutch cyclist” but that he had been struggling “with the pressure and expectations that comes with it”.
“It’s as if a backpack of 100kg has been lifted off my shoulders,” he said after announcing his indefinite break from the sport.
An injury and the coronavirus shutdown meant Dumoulin had gone as many as 400 days without competing before cycling finally resumed in late 2020.
He finished a disappointing seventh in the Tour de France, riding essentially as a domestique for teammate and eventual runner-up Primoz Roglic.
As a professional cyclist, he said, “you’re on an express train to the next training camp, to the next race, to the next objectives”.
“I really need to get off and think on the platform. Maybe I will catch the same train again in two months. Maybe I’ll catch a completely different train.”
He said that after attending team training camps ahead of the new season he could not “flick the switch” and decided that “stumbling on, ending up 12th in the Tour de France and fifth in the Olympics would not help”.
“I’m going to talk to a lot of people, think a lot, walk my dog and try to find out what I want as a person, on the bike, and what I want to do with my life.”
The news of Dumoulin’s break comes in the same week that Jumbo-Visma confirmed that star Belgian rider Wout van Aert had extended his contract with the team for a further three years.
