Joe Dombrowski is enjoying a well-deserved off season after completing a Giro-Tour double and making his Grand Boucle debut in 2022.
The Astana Qazaqstan rider was unable to repeat his 2021 Giro d’Italia stage win but played a major role in helping Vincenzo Nibali finish in his final Corsa Rosa and then quickly headed to France for his Tour debut.
He raced for a total of 68 days and doing the Giro-Tour double earned him an early end to the season after the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal.
“My takeaway is that it’s not easy to do the Giro-Tour double, because the rest of the season feels a bit long after that. But it was a nice season,” Dombrowski told Cyclingnews and Velonews recently.
Dombrowski wrote a personal diary for Cyclingnews as he rode the Giro d'Italia.
“It was good to ride my first Tour, in the sense that in some ways it’s not any different, but in other ways, it is. The Tour is the one race that is bigger than cycling. It was nice and so was the Giro.”
“There were no stage wins but sometimes the results don’t always show your condition, particularly if you want to hunt stages, because there is a bit more chance involved.”
Dombrowski had ridden 11 other Grand Tours before his Tour de France debut, but he soon realised the Tour is far bigger, far more prestigious and far more complex when there are stages across the Paris-Roubaix cobbles and then hard racing in the Alps and Pyrenees.
“The start in Denmark was really cool. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a bike race where I’ve seen that kind of atmosphere and crowds,” he said, selecting his best and worst memories of the 2022 Tour de France.
“I did not particularly enjoy the Roubaix stage. If I had never to do that again it would be okay.”
Riding for Nibali at the Giro was another high point of the 2022 season.
“He’s a calm and nice guy to race for. He’s one of the greatest riders of his generation. I don’t know who is coming in or leaving the team but I think his absence will be felt,” Dombrowski suggested.
The Astana experience
Dombrowski raced for Team Sky, EF Education and UAE Team Emirates before joining Astana Qazaqstan for 2022. He won the 2012 Giro Baby but an iliac artery problem forced him to miss much of the 2014 season and hindered the early years of his career.
He has a contract with Astana Qazaqstan for 2023 but faced the pressure and stress of chasing results and UCI ranking points in 2022. Astana Qazaqstan was never in the relegation zone but the team tried to turn around a difficult season, with only a handful of minor victories.The team has to be more successful in 2023 as a new three-year WorldTour cycle begins.
“We are safe because of the prior two seasons, but if we carry on like we did this year into the next years, it’s a problem for us. Unless you’re Jumbo or Ineos, you’re never really safe,” Dombrowski highlighted.
“We all signed on begrudgingly to the system we have now, but there are a lot of things that don’t make sense. The way things are weighted is a bit strange and you see riders and teams talking about skipping a Grand Tour to do small races to chase points. To me it makes sense to have the best riders at the best races, and the points system dilutes that a bit.”
Now an experienced and respected rider in the peloton, Dombrowski is not expecting major changes to professional cycling’s way of doing things nor to its business model.
“Would it be more interesting if it were more equal? Probably yes, but then we would have to change how we fund the sport,” he pointed out.“We have a lot of parties, like ASO, the teams, UCI, who are not co-operative on that. I don’t see it changing in my career."
