Tom Dumoulin has decided to retire from professional cycling and the Dutch Grand Tour winner and Jumbo Visma rider will hang up his racing wheels at the end of the current season.
Dumoulin, who struggled at the Giro before abandoning, said when the racing and training load gets bigger, he has been unable to cope and suffers with poor form and "fatigue, aches and injuries" rather than finding any improvement.
The former world TT champion and 2017 Giro winner, still aged just 31 years, announced his decision in lengthy personal statements on his social media accounts.
“I decided that 2022 will be my last year as a professional cyclist,” Dumoulin wrote. “In 2020 I had a very difficult year and at the end of that year I got overtrained and burned out. At the end of 2020, beginning of 2021, I was only a shadow myself and thus decided at the time to take break away from cycling to think about my future.”
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“But despite how good it occasionally still was: many times, and especially this year, it has been a frustrating path, at which my body felt tired and still does feel tired. As soon as the load in training or races gets higher, I suffer fatigue, aches and injuries instead of improving.
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"The effort in training did often not lead to the desired performances. For a while now there has been a disbalance between my 100 percent dedication, everything that I do and sacrifice for my sport and what I subsequently get out of it in return.”
“With a lot of patience and a very cautious approach, I’m convinced that I could get back to my full potential on the bike. But that would be a long and patient road, with no guarantees on success. I choose not to take that road, but to quit my active cycling instead and to take a new and unknown path.”
His decision to call time on his career follows a break from the sport, which he came back from last year and went straight into the Olympic Games, where he claimed silver in the TT behind Primož Roglič.
He went into the Giro, which concluded last Sunday, intending to ride for the general classification. However, on the first proper climbing test of Mount Etna he lost almost seven minutes to the other GC men and his challenge was over.
Dumoulin then went on to finish 4th in stage 7, when he helped his team mate Koen Bouwman to stage victory after they both made the breakaway and rode very strongly as a unit in the finale. However, Dumoulin then abandoned the race on stage 14.
More to come.
