Dumoulin Archives - Irish Peloton

May 31, 2017

Giro winners at the Tour de Suisse

The recent Giro d’Italia winner Tom Dumoulin is set to take part in the Tour de Suisse which starts on 10th June. It was always part of his season plans which he announced back in March. But with the start in Switzerland coming just two weeks after his victory in Milan, it’s still a surprising decision. Not least because it’s 16 years since the Giro winner decided to take part in the Tour de Suisse.

Usually, the main contenders at the Giro tend to skip both the Criterium du Dauphiné and the Tour de Suisse in favour of a block of training before heading to the Tour de France, perhaps via their national championships the week before. Alternatively, Giro contenders just take a break from the bike altogether before returning to build form for the second half of the season which would likely include the Vuelta a Espana.

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May 30, 2017

Spread Out Giro Stage Winners

This year’s Giro d’Italia was probably the closest battle between the top riders that we had ever seen in a Grand Tour. Before the final time trial to Milan, any one of four riders could still conceivably have won it. As it transpired, Tom Dumoulin, Nairo Quintana, Vincenzo Nibali and Thibaut Pinot performed as expected in the time trial. This led to a Dumoulin victory by a margin of 31 seconds over Quintana and 40 seconds over Nibali – one of the closest ever Grand Tour podiums as shown in the table below:

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May 28, 2017

Grand Tour Final Day Victories

A Grand Tour has never been closer. Five riders could still conceivably win this race. Any of the five could have a puncture, have a bad day or need a poo at a bad time – which could leave the door open for any of the others to take the overall victory.

The favourite remains Tom Dumoulin. He is the superior time trialist having put time into all of his rivals on the Stage 10 time trial to Montefalco. Every time trial is different – length, terrain, weather etc. But let’s take what we learned from Stage 10 and apply it to today’s test. The table below shows how many seconds per kilometre Dumoulin put into his rivals over 39.8km and how much time this would translate to over a shorter 29.3km stage.

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May 27, 2017

Closest Grand Tour Ever

Two stages to go of the 2017 Giro d’Italia and Nairo Quintana, Tom Dumoulin and Vincenzo Nibali are separated by just 43 seconds. But not only that, look down the general classification a bit further and there is also a mere 90 seconds separating Quintana and Domenico Pozzovivo back in sixth place, with Thibault Pinot and Ilnur Zakarin in between in fourth and fifth. This is remarkably close after over 85 hours of racing.

Is this the closest Grand Tour of all time?

Well, of the last 30 years, it certainly is. Any further back than that and data is hard to come by. You’re in the realm of trawling through newspaper archives for each edition of each race. And given the short window that this stat is in anyway relevant – if anyone else feels like doing that to themselves, go for it. You’ve got a few hours left before the G.C. in this Giro looks completely different.

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January 27, 2013

La Malédiction de la Marseillaise

The curse of the rainbow jersey is a well known phenomenon within cycling. The story goes that the winner of the world road race title will be saddled with bad luck during his year as world champion. Some of the most notable examples are Jean-Pierre Monseré (killed by an oncoming vehicle during a race), Rudy Dhaenens (develoepd heart problems and was forced to retire) and Stephen Roche (had a serious knee injury and barely raced).

Of course there are exceptions which completely disprove the curse. In recent years both Tom Boonen and Mark Cavendish had massively successful stints in the rainbow jersey. The fact is that if you take the winner of any race from year to year some of them will go on to have an excellent year and some of them won’t. Although there is some element of truth to the myth in that the world champion is ‘cursed’ with huge amounts of media obligations which may eat into their sleep and training time over the winter months.

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