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Cycling: Tom Dumoulin announces retirement due to exhaustion

2022-06-03T13:51:03.031Z


World champion, winner of the Giro d'Italia: Tom Dumoulin is the biggest star of Dutch cycling. But he ends his career prematurely - because of too much exhaustion.


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Cycling star Tom Dumoulin

Photo: IMAGO/ANP

"My body felt tired again and again and still feels tired": Dutch cycling star Tom Dumoulin surprisingly announced his retirement at the end of the year.

The 31-year-old, Giro winner and time trial world champion of 2017, says he suffers from constant physical exhaustion.

The professional from Team Jumbo Visma had already taken a break at the beginning of 2021 due to mental problems.

After his return, he had his second Olympic silver medal in the time trial.

“As soon as the training load got higher, I suffered from fatigue and injury instead of improving.

For some time there has been a mismatch between my 100 percent dedication to everything I sacrifice for this sport and what I get back," he said in a statement.

Dumoulin, the first and only Dutch winner of a major national tour since Joep Zoetemelk's tour triumph in 1980, now wants to draw up a plan for the coming months with his team.

Another big goal is the World Championships in Australia in September.

»A shadow of myself«

Dumoulin once again referred to the break last year in his statement.

"I was a shadow of myself at the end of 2020, beginning of 2021 and had to make up my mind about my future," he wrote: "I decided to continue my career, on the one hand because I feel a great passion for cycling, on the other hand because the Olympics are so was my focus for a long time.«

When he announced his hiatus in January 2021, Dumoulin was immensely depressed.

“I wanted to please everyone, wanted my team, my teammates, the sponsors, my family to be happy.

I forgot myself a bit," he said at the time.

"The question of what I want for myself, whether I still want to be a professional cyclist at all, has been asked me again and again in recent months, and I haven't found the time to answer it."

Dumoulin made his professional debut in 2011, winning nine stages in major national tours and finishing in the top 10 of the Tour, Giro and Vuelta. His best result at the Tour of France was second place (2018).

In the haze of the doping investigations in the so-called Operation Aderlass around the German doctor Mark Schmidt, the name Dumoulins also appeared in 2020.

But there was never a concrete suspicion.

aha/sid

Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2022-06-03

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