Tom Dumoulin is looking forward to making his racing debut for Jumbo-Visma at the 100th Volta a Catalunya after a solid training block at altitude on Tenerife.
Dumoulin, who is training with his team-mate and winner of the 2019 Tour de l'Avenir, Tobias Foss, is finally happy with where he is in regards to his form after getting over intestinal parasites that forced him out the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana.
Speaking to Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, the 2017 Giro d'Italia winner said: "On the plane to Spain I had to go to the toilet every ten minutes, so I returned home immediately. At that moment we checked the stool and it came out that I was suffering from a parasite."
The 29-year-old was set to make his 2020 debut in Spain last month, after a long lay-off due to a knee injury that forced him out of last year's Giro.
But the Dutchman's luck abandoned once again on the eve of Valenciana when he fell ill.
Dumoulin has taken time to recover and is ready to return to the peloton, but cycling calendar still faces a lot of uncertainty because of the global spread of coronavirus.
He said: "Hopefully the virus dissolves slowly as it gets warmer. This uncertain situation is very frightening for most riders.
"My advantage is that I have been used to it for almost a year now that there is no really clear plan for my return. Maybe that's why I come out the best of all riders from this period."
Dumoulin is down to ride the Tour de France alongside an immensely strong team including last year's Vuelta a España winner, Primož Roglič and third place at last year's Tour, Steven Kruijswijk.
He says that the Tour, along with the Olympics in Tokyo, are his goals to make it a "beautiful summer."
Tim Bonville-Ginn is one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter.
Bonville-Ginn started working in cycling journalism while still at school and university for a voluntary site based on Twitter before also doing slots for Eurosport's online web team and has been on location at the Tour de Yorkshire, Tour of Britain, UCI World Championships and various track events. He then joined the Cycling Weekly team in late February of 2020.
When not writing stories for the site, Bonville-Ginn doesn't really switch off his cycling side as he watches every race that is televised as well as being a rider himself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager.
He rides a Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on his local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being his preferred terrain.
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