Tom Dumoulin still can’t understand how Isaac Del Toro and UAE Emirates gave away the overall victory in the Giro d’Italia. The former Giro winner finds it especially disappointing for the young Mexican, whom he considers a fantastic rider. He shared this on Monday during the evening program of the Wielergala.
On Monday evening, the theater show De Laatste Etappe took place in Utrecht, with guests including Stef Clement and Tom Dumoulin. At the start of the performance, presenter Sander Kleikers asked all attendees about their moments of the year, including José De Cauwer and Jip van den Bos.
Clement cited the Giro d’Italia finale as his moment of the year. “I love unpredictability, and that was the finish in the Giro, where Del Toro and Richard Carapaz kept sticking to each other's wheels in a standoff on the Colle delle Finestre. And where Simon Yates, with help from Wout van Aert, actually wove together three aspects in one: the chess game of cycling. Tom Dumoulin even switched it off,” he threw the proverbial ball to him.
Dumoulin himself won the Giro in 2017 – photo: fotopersburo Cor Vos
“I really switched it off,” said the 2017 Giro winner. “I really couldn’t understand how Del Toro and UAE Emirates XRG were just giving away that Giro overall win in the most stupid way. Del Toro could have easily won that Giro! Yes, of course Yates had a great day and maybe he would otherwise have ridden away on the Finestre, but certainly never with such a big lead.”
“That is just purely because of Del Toro… I don’t know what he was doing. To this day, I still don’t understand it. I actually got angry myself!”, Dumoulin laughs in the cozy setting. “So I switched off the TV. Yes, really.”
Dumoulin then got the crowd laughing. “So much stupidity, I don’t have to watch that. While I think Del Toro is a fantastic rider, truly amazing. I hope he will give Tadej Pogačar a hard time in the coming years, maybe then he’ll have to move to another team. That would be fantastic.”
“Only that Giro was very unfortunate. Del Toro will probably slap his head sometimes because he realizes that maybe that was his chance. You never know. I also thought I would get many chances to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France one day. But I can tell you: that never happened. Opportunities don’t always come anymore.”
