Tom Dumoulin (Netherlands) raced to a gold medal in the Elite Men’s Time Trial at the UCI Road World Championships today. The win caps an incredible year for both Dumoulin and Team Sunweb so far, with the Dutch rider taking his maiden Grand Tour victory at the Giro d’Italia as well as the overall victory at the BinckBank Tour. The win also completed a superb start to the championships for Team Sunweb who won both team time trials.
Dumoulin raced around the 31km course in a time of 44’41”, posting the fastest time at each checkpoint before finishing a stunning 57″ ahead of the silver medallist Primoz Roglic (Slovenia) atop the testing finishing climb of Mount Fløyen. Chris Froome (Great Britain) took the bronze medal, finishing 1’21” behind Dumoulin.
With a wide smile and face of excitement, Dumoulin said after the finish: “I can’t believe it, it’s really amazing! I thought my power meter was off because it was so high. I felt really, really good. After it started raining I had to take the corners really slow, especially in the first kilometre of the climb with all the twists and turns, every corner my back wheel was slipping because I had my TT tyres on, as I thought it would stay dry.
He added: “I chose not to take the risk swapping bikes. I think I’m one of the guys who can do a really good climb on the TT bike and have no problems handling it, so I think it was the right decision. Doing the double is amazing. Last Sunday it was a bit of a surprise that we won with the team, it was an amazing day. I think today is less surprising – I was one of the favourites, but in some ways that makes it harder.”
Nearly a minute better than everyone ?? — just saying