It was that Sunday full of sunshine, pink and gold confetti, champagne in the square in front of Milan Cathedral. On 28 May 2017 at half past five, all viewing figures of Eurosport, the channel that exclusively broadcast the hundredth edition of the Giro d’Italia in the Netherlands, were broken. The Giro by Tom Dumoulin. ‘Tom fliVkt het’ and ‘Jan, Joop, TOM’, were on the front pages of pink-coloured newspapers on Monday. The first Dutch Giro winner ever, finally a successor for the Tour winners Jan Janssen (1968) and Joop Zoetemelk (1980).
Also read: Mathieu van der Poel wins first stage Giro d’Italia and verovert pink sweater
Five years later, now that the Giro 2022 has started on Friday in Budapest, a lot has changed. Dumoulin (31) has returned to the Italian round after years of physical and mental problems, but has only shown sporadic good form this season. The best round riders of the moment are missing. Slovenians Tadej Pogacar and Primoz Roglic opt for the Tour de France. Colombian Egan Bernal, last year’s winner, is recovering from a serious fall during training. Viewing figures records are not to be expected in the Netherlands in advance, despite Mathieu van der Poel’s debut. The Tour, in the holiday month of July, is the tour for the general public. The Giro is especially for cycling enthusiasts.
Giro winner from Ecuador
Olympic champion Richard Carapaz (28) is the favorite this year. The leader of Ineos Grenadiers broke through in the 2019 Giro with a win in the fourth stage, the very day that Dumoulin suffered a knee injury that led to retirement. That year, an average of 229,000 Dutch people tuned in to Eurosport every day, to see how Carapaz surprised and became the first Giro winner from Ecuador. The corona editions of 2020 (with just the pink and eventually a third place for Wilco Kelderman) and 2021 did not come close to 2017 in terms of interest from TV viewers.
‘Unforgettable May, from yearning for sports success’. in the sheet cycling review reminisce about Dumoulin’s teammates. Highlights like winning the long time trial and uphill to Oropa. But also setbacks. Foreman Wilco Kelderman who has to go home after a fall. Dumoulin himself who gets off his bike in a tough mountain stage for a sanitary stop and sees his lead in the standings decrease from two and a half minutes to 31 counts. “How frustrating it must be for Nibali and Quintana that you can defecate during the race and still keep the pink”, the German servant Simon Geschke had encouraged his leader afterwards.
Viewing figures illustrate how the Netherlands fell under the spell of the Giro that year. From one and a half million people who switch directly to Eurosport at any point in the first week, it goes to 2.2 million in week two. Many see the summaries at the NOS. In the third week, 3.9 million people watch the Giro on Eurosport for at least one minute. The race is very exciting. Will Dumoulin still lose in stage nineteen?
“Quintana and Nibali had a combine,” recalls teammate Laurens ten Dam. Colombian Quintana takes over the leader’s jersey, but Dumoulin limits his deficit and is the favorite at the start of the final time trial.
Never before have more than a million Dutch people watched a broadcast of Eurosport, the record at that time stands at 489,000 at the tennis final of the Australian Open. But when Dumoulin on the podium in Milan with a facial expression between disbelief and euphoria the very heavy Trofeo senza fine above his head, the score peaks at 1,781,000 viewers.
For comparison: that same Sunday, the Monaco Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen, scored ‘only’ 783,000 on Ziggo Sport. Three days later, 880,000 people witnessed via NPO1 how the Limburg cycling hero is being honored by 10,000 fans, including Janssen and Zoetemelk, on the Markt in Maastricht.
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Every ride looks like a classic
The Giro d’Italia as part of the collective memory, which had only happened before in the Netherlands when Erik Breukink (in vain) competed for the pink at the end of the eighties. His heroic stage win over the snowy flanks of the Passo di Gavia, with a supporting role for Johan van der Velde, inspired program maker Wilfried de Jong fifteen years later to a reconstruction†
Dutch cycling history is also there in 2016, when a fall costs Steven Kruijswijk the almost certain victory. Dumoulin, who loses to Chris Froome a year after his Girozege after a great fight in the queen stage. There are also nice footnotes, such as Taco van der Hoorn’s surprising stage win last year.
Against an often picturesque backdrop, every ride in Italy looks like a classic. The classification riders will compete this edition on climbs such as Etna (stage 4), Blockhaus (stage 10), Mortirolo (stage 17) and Pordoi (stage 20), the highest peak at 2,239 meters, the Cima Coppic† In the intermediate stages, the eyes are on the debutants Van der Poel, Friday winner of the first stage, and Biniam Girmay, the just 22-year-old Eritrean who became the first African classic winner at the end of March in Ghent-Wevelgem. And can Mark Cavendish (36), already fifteen times the fastest in a Giro sprint, still win?
Dumoulin’s return does not lead to high expectations in advance. His 2017 Girozege and the miracle year after that, with a second place in Giro and Tour, are far in the past. The Limburger, last year after his comeback second in the Olympic time trial, has to share the leadership at Jumbo-Visma with compatriot Sam Oomen and the Norwegian Tobias Foss. The team management only wants to talk about extending the generous contract with which Dumoulin was lured away from Sunweb, the current DSM in 2019, until after the Giro.
In that team of manager Iwan Spekenbrink, this Giro rides a striking debutant. In 2018, 22-year-old Tymen Arensman finished second behind Pogacar in the Tour de l’Avenir, traditionally a nursery for round talent. This spring he finished sixth in Tirreno-Adriatico and third in the Tour of the Alps. Arensman, a good climber and time trialist, will ride in the service of leader Romain Bardet. And who knows, in three weeks’ time, go for your own chance in the final time trial in Verona. But, he said at the start in Budapest, “you have to get there first.”