After a fight to the very end, Tom Dumoulin won his first Grand Tour yesterday at the 100th anniversary edition of the Giro d’Italia.
After three weeks of competition, Dumoulin was favourite to win the overall ahead of the individual time trial in Milan, with just 53 seconds separating Team Sunweb’s Dutch time trial champion from the Maglia Rosa Nairo Quintana (Movistar Team).
When Dumoulin arrived at the second check point, he was the virtual Maglia Rosa and was able to continue powering to glory, winning the Giro d’Italia by 31 seconds.
An emotional Dumoulin said of his win: “This is incredible, I can’t believe it. Beforehand I knew that I needed to stay calm but I almost couldn’t. I am happy for myself but also happy that so many special people around me were able to share this moment with me and to have the team up on the podium with me really topped it all. It’s been a great atmosphere with the team over the past few weeks and I can’t thank the team enough for all that they have done. All of our hard work has paid off and I couldn’t be more thrilled.”
Team Sunweb’s Giro d’Italia coach Luke Roberts added: “With everyone so tired we knew that today would be really unpredictable, but within the first few kilometres I knew that this was going to be a good time trial for Tom. To finish off these three weeks with a win is brilliant. We’ve had some ups and downs but the whole team have done an amazing job and their incredible efforts have been rewarded.”
