Cycling team Jumbo-Visma chooses three leaders in the upcoming Tour of Italy. Sam Oomen also gets a protected role. It was previously known that Tom Dumoulin and Tobias Foss would go for the general classification in the Giro, which starts on Friday 6 May in Budapest.
Dumoulin won the Giro in 2017, finished second in 2018 and in 2019 he stepped down prematurely with a knee injury. De Limburger previously announced that the Tour of Italy is his main goal this season. ,,Together with Foss and Oomen, Tom is one of the riders for the general classification”, sports director Merijn Zeeman told VeloNews, ,,He is in Tenerife with the team and things are going well. I am confident that he will do well in the Giro.”
For Oomen it will be his fourth participation in the Giro. In 2018, the 26-year-old rider was part of the Team Sunweb squad that guided Dumoulin to second place. He himself finished ninth in the standings. ,,We start in the Giro as an underdog, but that gives us the chance to gamble a bit and see how we are doing after the first rest day. If one of the three is really good, we go for that rider, but they all start as a classification rider,” said Zeeman.
Dumoulin took a break from cycling last season, but made a strong comeback with Olympic silver in the time trial at the Games in Tokyo. Zeeman does not want to put too much pressure on the Limburger, because the last grand tour he completed was the Tour de France in 2020. ,,Everyone expects great things from him in the Netherlands, but it is his first grand tour since 2020 and again for the first that he goes for a ranking. There are other riders who have proven that they are at a higher level, but I am curious what he can do.”
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