Former Giro d’Italia winner Tom Dumoulin will return from a four-month break in June eyeing the Olympic Games later this year. Dumoulin, 30, who won the Giro in 2017, stepped away from the sport in January and will race in the Tour de Suisse which runs from June 6-13.
“The rider of Team Jumbo-Visma has made this decision together with the team as he has recently found the joy in cycling again,” Jumbo said.
“After the Swiss stage race, the former world time trial champion will also appear at the start of the Dutch time trial and road championships. Dumoulin also has the ambition to go to the Olympic Games in Tokyo,” they added.
Cycling events at the re-scheduled Olympics start on July 24 with the men’s road race, six days after the final stage of this year’s Tour de France.
The world cycling championships begin on September 19 in Flanders, Belgium.
Dumoulin said in January winning the Giro and coming second in the 2018 race and the Tour in the same year had made him “Tom Dumoulin the great Dutch cyclist” and had been struggling “with the pressure that comes with it, the expectations”.
He said at the time that attending team training camps last winter he could not “flick the switch” and decided that “stumbling on, ending up 12th in the Tour and fifth in the Olympics would not help.”
RBA/AFP Photos: Bettini
