'You can feel caged' - Dumoulin on Visma and Simon Yates' surprise retirement

Like Yates, Dumoulin was riding for what is now Visma | Lease a Bike, and his decision took his own team and the wider cycling world by surprise. Although Dumoulin returned to competition in time to win a silver medal in the time trial at that summer’s Tokyo Olympics, it marked the beginning of the end of his career, and he retired definitively midway through 2022.

Dumoulin, who enjoyed a memorable contest against Yates on the 2018 Giro d’Italia, expressed surprise at the Briton’s retirement, though he added that he recognised his likely rationale.

“I completely understand Yates because I was in the same situation as him,” Dumoulin told El País. “Ultimately, cycling is one of the most demanding sports on the planet, if not the most demanding. 

“The demands are brutal. And there are riders who are very capable of handling those demands, but there are others who, despite being tough guys, perhaps have a clearer idea of where their limit lies.”

Dumoulin confessed that he struggled to break from the strictures of cycling life even after confirming his retirement. For much of his career, his days had essentially been mapped out for him.

“For years, I had the feeling that I wasn’t the one in control of my career. And in my case, not managing my career meant not controlling my life,” he said. “I felt like I was always bowing to the needs and desires of others: sponsors, fans, the team, coaches. Everyone had an idea of what I had to do at any given moment, but at the same time – and it’s hard to say – no one ever asked me, ‘Hey, Tom, how are you?’ It was exhausting. So much so that I started to feel depressed. I even came to hate cycling. To hate the bicycle. I didn’t want it in my life anymore.”

Dumoulin enjoyed his greatest success with Sunweb (now Picnic-PostNL), winning the Giro d’Italia in 2017, but he extricated himself from his contract with the team to join Jumbo-Visma ahead of the 2020 season. The Dutch squad’s extreme attention to detail would weigh heavily on Dumoulin.

“Visma is the most professional and advanced team in the world, even more so than Pogacar’s UAE. They base everything on data, on detailed analysis. Their system is so finely tuned and everything is so structured that at times you can feel caged as a cyclist,” Dumoulin said. “That obsession isn’t inherently bad, as the results clearly show, but at the same time it creates such a heavy atmosphere that the pressure ends up suffocating you.”

Yates has yet to expand on his reasons for retiring after winning the Giro and a stage of the Tour in his lone season at Visma, but Dumoulin wondered if the micromanagement at the team had been a factor in the Briton's decision.

“If you don’t feel well one day and decide to skip your training intervals, it sparks a lot of discussions within the team,” Dumoulin said. “I’m sure that at Jayco, he could put his phone away and train however he wanted, since those small changes to the plan were accepted and understood. Visma is different. Everything is more demanding. And of course, freedom takes a back seat.