Dumoulin: 'The third week will be very different'
He was not bluffing. On the eve of stage 14 of the Giro d'Italia, Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb) was asked if he would be able to fend off the inevitable attacks of Nairo Quintana (Movistar) et al on the slopes of Oropa, and his answer was that of a man who quietly fancied himself to do all that and more. "It will be only the last 20 minutes that are full gas," Dumoulin told reporters in Tortona. "That's normally what suits me very well."
24 hours later, Dumoulin soft-pedaled between the rows of tables in the cramped press room at the rear of the striking Santuario di Oropa, and sat down for his press conference as the winner of the stage and an increasingly secure holder of the maglia rosa. After dominating the Montefalco time trial in midweek, Dumoulin's margins are striking. He is now 2:47 clear of the second-placed Quintana, 3:25 ahead of Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) and 3:40 up on Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida).
"Like I said before hand, this is a stage normally that really suits me: easy all day and then full gas on the last climb, which is something I can do very well," Dumoulin said. "It will be very different in the third week. Yes, it's really nice to have a time trial victory. Yes, it's really nice to have a win in Oropa now. But the third week will be very different."
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It was, by any measure, a startling performance. Dumoulin had conjured up something roughly similar to overhaul Chris Froome at Cumbre del Sol on the 2015 Vuelta a España, but the context of his calm disposal Quintana here is very different. As Katusha Alpecin directeur sportif Dimitri Konyshev put it to Cyclingnews afterwards, "Dumoulin is the padrone of the Giro. There was nothing to do against him today."
Dumoulin fastidiously stuck to his own pace When Quintana bobbed clear 3.5 kilometers from the top, but never allowed his deficit to stretch beyond 10 seconds. 1500 metres from the summit, Dumoulin was back on Quintana's wheel. Almost immediately, the maglia rosa produced an acceleration that did for Nibali, and only Quintana, Mikel Landa (Sky) and Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha-Alpecin) could follow him into the final kilometer.
After setting the pace on the final ramps, Dumoulin still somehow had the wherewithal to overhaul Zakarin when he opened the sprint from distance. Behind, Quintana sat heavily into his saddle, and he crossed the line a crestfallen fourth on the stage, 14 seconds down on Dumoulin.
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