Tom Dumoulin has described his life as a blank canvas after retiring from professional racing and deciding to divorce, revealing the emotions and pain he has endured as he realised he no longer wanted to be a professional athlete.
“For the first time in my life I can decide things for myself,” Dumoulin told Dutch newspaper NRC in a long, often emotional and very personal interview.
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“I’m starting with a completely blank canvas and I have no idea the direction that I'm going. And I'd like to leave it that way. Because it feels good.”
“I'm getting a divorce. We decided that last week. I don't know if that's necessarily something for the newspaper,” he revealed. “I always hoped that I wouldn't become one of those cyclists who got divorced after his career ended. But unfortunately, that is the case.”
For now, Dumoulin is not interested in a coaching role or any involvement in professional cycling. His love of the sport is still alive and he may return in the future, but he now needs time for himself.
He travelled to the World Championships in Australia with his family and sisters because he had already bought tickets for them to be at his farewell race. He reveals it hurt to see the peloton ride past and realise he would never race with them again but it was also a moment of release.
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“It was my life for eleven years, and it just passed me by. That kick from driving up the mountain at the front is not going to come anymore. But so far I don't miss it at all,” he claimed, refuting the idea he could work for the Intermarche team in some role.
“I have sometimes felt lonely in the last few years but I wasn't unhappy all year. And I've never been depressed. I still feel the love for the bike. Maybe one day I'll be a coach but I’m going to stay away from a professional team for a while.”
After the World Championships, Dumoulin began a more personal voyage of discovery, travelling to Fiji and Costa Rica for six weeks.
“I slept in hostels because otherwise you really don't meet anyone. Everyone is on their own journey. And if I didn't feel like talking to people, I moved on. I have literally lived by the minute,” he said.
“I am grateful and happy with what cycling has taught me, but now I want to be closer to the person I am.”
“The fire has gone out. I no longer have the constant need to push myself to the limit. I want to be different in life, to be better for myself. And for the people around me. I want to connect more.”
“You don't stop if you haven’t thought about it all for a while”
To the winner, the spoils: Tom Dumoulin at the 2017 Giro d’Italia (Image credit: Getty Images Sport)
Dumoulin has flirted with retirement since taking time away from the sport at the start of 2021 after a move to Jumbo-Visma from Team Sunweb in 2020. He appeared tired of the demands of the sport. He returned that summer to win a silver medal at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, but his passion for life as a professional cyclist never truly returned.
After abandoning the 2022 Giro d'Italia with back problems, Dumoulin announced that he would call it quits at the end of the season but then suddenly ended his career on August 15.
Dumoulin admits it was not an easy decision to make. Yet he has learnt from the process.
“It's not easy to pull the plug. It’s everything you've been working on all your life. Your big dream, your ambition. You don't stop if you haven’t thought about it all for a while,” he said in the interview.
“That's why I don't regret that I went on for so long even if I didn't always enjoy it. I couldn't have gone any other way. Every now and then you just have to go through the pain, through a difficult period, to gain certain insights. If I’d quit straight away, I might have chosen a job now that I would have wanted to quit again in four years.”
Dumoulin retired after 11 seasons as a professional.
He is the son of academics and wanted to become a doctor but gave up his studies after discovering that he was good at time trialling with the small Parkhotel Valkenburg team, winning his first race in 2014 when already part of the Giant-Shimano team.
He became a national hero when he won the 2017 Giro and then finished on the podium in both the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in 2018. However, he crashed in the 2019 Giro, hurting his knee. The resulting surgery forced him to take time out, which strengthened his desire to find more in life.
“Top sport is very beautiful, but you also have to be a little crazy in your head to keep it up for a long time. I think that almost every top athlete at the highest level has something not quite right,” he suggested, highlighting the physical pain and fatigue of heavy training regimes, fueled by the expectation and demands from fans, sponsors and teams.
“Looking back now, I think I raced as a way to show the world and myself how well I could do it,” Dumoulin said.
“But you ask yourself: is that a healthy way of life? To put your whole life aside? That went way too far for me, and I'll never do it again.
“I've always thought: what else is there in life? Most teammates didn't understand that. But part of my cycling life felt like a sacrifice to me. I thought: I'm doing this now so I can live a normal life later on.’
“Maybe I wasn't the best person to be a professional cyclist for fifteen years, no. In fact, I'm not suited for that. That's why it ran away after eleven years.”
Stephen is one of the most experienced members of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. Before becoming Editor-at-large, he was Head of News at Cyclingnews. He has previously worked for Shift Active Media, Reuters and Cycling Weekly. He is a member of the Board of the Association Internationale des Journalistes du Cyclisme (AIJC).
