Having long been known as an excellent time triallist, Tom Dumoulin proved that he can develop into a great stage race rider when he finished fifth in the Tour de Suisse. For the moment, however, the Dutchman refuses to look to far ahead and won't think about the grand tours yet.

 

Tom Dumoulin put up a strong defend for his second place overall on the final stage of the Tour de Suisse today from Martigny to Saas-Fee but he eventually slipped down to fifth overall by the end of the day. Nevertheless is was an impressive ride from the young Dutchman with a strong climbing effort to the mountain top finish, seeing him concede just 2’18″ by the finish.

 

It caps a strong week from Dumoulin and the team during which we saw Deumoulin take two second places in the individual time trials, and also John Degenkolb sprint to third place despite being hampered by the after-effects of a heavy fall on stage four.

 

The race will put the team in good stead for their respective National Championships next weekend around Europe.

 

The final stage of this year’s Tour de Suisse always looked like it would be decisive in the fight for the overall and with Dumoulin sitting in second with a slender advantage over a strong group of climbers he was up against it.

 

The day’s move finally established itself after a hard fight. At first a dozen riders formed ahead of the peloton and then Georg Preidler bridged across with a few others to make a strong group of 17, however their advantage never ballooned.

 

On the penultimate climb of the day, they held less than a minutes gap over the chasing bunch being whittled down by the fast pace being set at its head. Dumoulin was looking strong but knew that the main difficulty still lay ahead so he chose not to react when Rui Costa and two others broke clear in pursuit of the leaders.

 

At first the overall race leader led the chase, and then the team joined with Warren Barguil pulling hard for Dumoulin as well as Preidler who sat up from the lead group to help.

 

On the final climb Costa pulled clear on his own and soloed to the stage victory and in doing so took his third overall success in the race. After a hard fight to limit the loss to Costa and the others ahead, Dumoulin finally came across the line in ninth place for the day, and slipped just a few places down to fifth overall, underlining the general classification talents that he holds.

 

Next up for him is the Dutch time trial championships during the week and then the national road race next Sunday.

 

Team Giant-Shimano coach, Marc Reef said after the race was wrapped up: “We went into the stage with the target of riding to protect Tom’s high position on the GC. Overall the boys did a good job again today. We had Georg up in the front group so that he could help if and when needed and this worked well.

 

“Three riders attacked on the penultimate climb and the guys stayed calm here and let the leader chase. Warren then joined and started to pull and Georg came back too.

 

“On the final 20km climb to the finish Tom worked as well to limit their advantage but in front the guys were stronger uphill and overtook him on GC. But we are really happy with his fifth place overall on GC – he has showed this week what we already know about him, that he is a great talent and that working towards developing his overall capabilities to become a GC contender. He is still young and the future is going to be exciting.”

 

Dumoulin also gave his reaction after the stage, saying: “Once again i had very good feelings today and am happy with my fifth place. A result like this proves that I am already capable of getting strong results in the overall classifications of tours like this, at WorldTour level, but for the moment I don’t want to get my mind on thinking about the Grand Tours.

 

“I still have a lot of development ahead of me and have time for this. I haven’t done too much specific climbing work, I have more just made sure that I work on my overall shape and get stronger and this is paying off in the hills too.”