Tom Dumoulin advises Evenepoel to ride the Tour: ‘The best Tours are ridden by guys with a disrupted preparation’

Team boss Patrick Lefevere has made it clear that the world champion will not start in the Tour de France. In the podcast Wielerclub Wattage, Tom Dumoulin says that he had chosen to start in France. “The best Tours are ridden by guys with a disturbed preparation. Vingegaard has been injured for two years in a row. He has not been able to do his preparation as he wanted. But he was there in the Tour.”

Dumoulin says that Evenepoel should mainly do what he feels like in the next two weeks. “He doesn’t have to train hard. Then go on an altitude training when he has recovered. Then he lives on the basis of the Giro and he will ride a super Tour. Not riding the Tour is actually listening to the pressure that the whole of Belgium and the rest of the world puts on him. He has to want it himself, but I think he should think about it for the next two weeks.”

De Limburger argues that Evenepoel sometimes does not have the ideal preparation. “Then he can only ride a race in the coming years if he is optimally prepared. Hasn’t been sick, hasn’t had an injury. How high is the pressure then? Then it will be a long career that way. He is 23 years old. Isn’t that a good age to ride the Tour de France?”