Tom Dumoulin has been forced to end his season due to injuries sustained in a training crash, where he was hit by a driver.
The Dutch Jumbo-Visma rider had been building towards the World Championships in Flanders later this month, but has now had to pull out due to a broken scaphoid, a bone in the wrist, on his right hand.
Dumoulin was out on a recon of his own sportive called Tour de Dumoulin, which is scheduled to take place on October 3 in the Ardennes region of the Netherlands, when he was struck by a car with him hitting the road hard afterwards.
Dumoulin said: "This is a big disappointment. My season is finished. That’s a big disappointment, because I just got really good at it again. Also, during the training today I felt really strong. I had a lot of confidence that I could ride a very strong month."
Dumoulin took a break from riding his bike all together at the start of the season for his mental wellbeing and to decide if he wanted to continue his career in the peloton.
He decided to return to racing with his team at the Tour de Suisse in mid-June where he put in a very solid display including a top five in a mountainous time trial before heading home and winning his national time trial title.
Dumoulin was scheduled to ride the World Championships and then the Italian Classics finishing with the Monument of Il Lombardia.
"I was really looking forward to that. Those are races that suit me very well, but unfortunately it won’t be for this year," said the 30-year-old.
Dumoulin had just finished racing at the Benelux Tour where he finished ninth overall managing a top 10 in three stages with a third place on the final stage behind Bahrain Victorious duo of Matej Mohorič and eventual overall winner Sonny Colbrelli.
He will be going into surgery as soon as tomorrow morning (September 11).
Hi, I'm 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. Proud Yorkshireman from the UK's answer to Flanders, Calderdale, go check out the cobbled climbs!
I started watching cycling back in 2010, before all the hype around London 2012 and Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France. In fact, it was Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck's battle in the fog up the Tourmalet on stage 17 of the Tour de France.
It took me a few more years to get into the journalism side of things, but I had a good idea I wanted to get into cycling journalism by the end of year nine at school and started doing voluntary work soon after. This got me a chance to go to the London Six Days, Tour de Yorkshire and the Tour of Britain to name a few before eventually joining Eurosport's online team while I was at uni, where I studied journalism. Eurosport gave me the opportunity to work at the world championships in Harrogate back in the awful weather.
After various bar jobs, I managed to get my way into Cycling Weekly in late February of 2020 where I mostly write about racing and everything around that as it's what I specialise in but don't be surprised to see my name on other news stories.
When not writing stories for the site, I don't really switch off my cycling side as I watch every race that is televised as well as being a rider myself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager. Maybe too regular.
My bike is a well used Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on my local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being my preferred terrain.
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