Tom Dumoulin will target a Grand Tour GC in 2022
Tom Dumoulin will target a Grand Tour GC in 2022
Six months after he returned from a hiatus that saw him spend the first several months of the 2021 season away from racing, Tom Dumoulin has said that he is eyeing a Grand Tour GC bid in 2022.
“I will ride for the classification in a Grand Tour in 2022,” he said in an interview with De Telegraaf.
Dumoulin did not specify which Grand Tour would be his target next season, but he has ample experience in all three. He took the red jersey into the penultimate stage of the 2015 Vuelta a España, ultimately finishing sixth, and then broke through in a major way with an overall victory at the 2017 Giro d’Italia. The following year, he finished second at both the Giro and the Tour de France.
Last January, just after Jumbo-Visma had announced that Dumoulin would be part of its Tour lineup, the 31-year-old Dutchman announced that he would be taking a break from racing. He spent the next few months on hiatus, finding motivation to compete again, and then returned in June.
He went on to win the Dutch national time trial title and a silver medal in the discipline at the Olympics.
Next year, he will evidently resume his focus on Grand Tours, giving Jumbo-Visma some decisions to make with the likes of Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard having their own three-week ambitions.
“We have talked a lot about it in the team in recent months,” Dumoulin said. “I think riding a classification is very special. That is the ultimate challenge, the pinnacle of cycling.”
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