Tom Dumoulin has confirmed that he will move from Team Sunweb to Jumbo-Visma from the end of this season. The tranfer had been rumoured for a while but only now has it been made official.
Dumoulin, who counts a win and second place at the Giro-d’Italia, second overall at the Tour de France and stage wins at all three Grand Tours on his palmares, will join a team that already includes Grand Tour contenders Primoz Roglic and Steven Kruijswijk.
So far this year, those two have taken a podium each at a three-week race with Roglic finishing third at the Giro and Kruijswijk on the same step at the Tour. It’s been a less successful season for Dumoulin, who crashed at the Giro and wasn’t able to recover in time for the Tour.
However, he will start his first season with Jumbo-Visma at 29 years old leaving him with a good number of seasons to add to his Grand Tour tally and justify his new team’s investment.
Just how well the competing ambitions and egos of several potential team leaders will work out is something that other teams have coped with to varying degrees of success.
Team Sky-Ineos have won the last two Tours de France with a rider who wasn’t the defending champion despite the defending champion also riding (and subsequently standing on a lower step of the podium).
Movistar on the other hand sometimes appear to chase down their own breakaways, never quite confirm who their leader is and rarely look like troubling the final top three of a stage race.