Tom Dumoulin has announced his decision to take a break from his professional cycling career. The 2017 Giro d’Italia and World Time Trial Champion has consulted with his team and both parties have agreed on an unpaid leave for an indefinite period, starting immediately.
Predictably, but somehow still a bit surprisingly, Jumbo Visma have already uploaded a video about it. It’s eight minutes long, so if you watch the entire thing then you’re probably better informed about the situation than anybody who’s written about it. Especially us, we only did thirty seconds.
The 30 year old says that he’s long struggled with “how to find my way as Tom Dumoulin the cyclist. With the pressure that goes with that, with the expectations from different parties.” Sounds like someone got a Kierkegaard book for Christmas. Or, actually, a copy of Striking the Sun (if so: sorry, Tom).
With the weight of responsibility off his back for a while, he’s jetting off to Ibiza, buying a fast car, and entering into a relationship with a rich girl half his age. This was supposed to be a riff on middle-aged men having their lost weekends and mid-life crises, but actually it’s pretty much exactly what Tom Boonen did after we accidentally ruined his marriage by writing about him sleeping with a podium girl at the Tour of Britain.
The announcement is especially shocking since it comes so shortly after Dumoulin’s public intent to target the Spring Classics this year, plus an even more recent statement from Jumbo Visma that named him in the team’s Tour de France squad alongside Primoz Roglic, Steven Kruiswijk, and Wout van Aert.
It’s a major loss for Jumbo Visma, and an even greater loss for the sport to go without a rider of such incredible quality. Hopefully with a little rest and relaxation we’ll see him return to the peloton as strong as ever next year.
We’re contractually obliged to include an insult in every article to get us in trouble at a later date, so we’ll also add that he has quite a large face.