Tom Dumoulin: It's going to be difficult to win the Giro d'Italia

Tom Dumoulin was in a place beyond words. Monte Zoncolan has that sort of effect. Fifty metres or so past the finish of stage 14 of the Giro d'Italia, the Dutchman was flagged down by a pair of Sunweb soigneurs, and he eased to a halt. With eyes glazed and face drawn, he leant silently against a barrier as they helped him into a long-sleeved jersey and wrapped a towel around his neck.

Dumoulin had reached the finish in 5th place on the stage, 37 seconds down on winner Chris Froome (Team Sky) and 31 behind maglia rosa Simon Yates (Mitchelton-Scott), but it was too soon to talk numbers with his entourage, too soon to mull over the verdict the mountain had delivered.

Like all the top finishers on the stage, Dumoulin was called to the anti-doping tent near the podium, and the wait gave him time to compose his thoughts on the day's stage. When he emerged shortly afterwards, however, the traffic and tumult in the narrow finishing area was such that he could scarcely hear himself think, far less hear the questions of the television crews that stood in his path as he edged his way down the mountain.

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"I think it's going to be difficult to win the Giro even though my performance was good today," Dumoulin said on reaching the Sunweb team bus.

Even 40 minutes after the stage had finished, Dumoulin seemed unsure if his glass was half full or half empty after tackling what he described as the toughest mountain he had ever encountered. "It was brutal, the hardest one I ever did. I expected that, but it was even harder than I expected," he said.

On the vertiginous slopes of the Zoncolan, Dumoulin managed to avoid enduring any obvious moment of crisis as he finished just ahead of Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ). However, he was unable to follow when Froome's fierce acceleration split the front group a little over 4 kilometres from the summit.

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