Tom Dumoulin was glad to finish a nervous stage two of the Giro d’Italia, even though he lost the pink jersey at the end of the day.
“Other teams had a strategy to take it; we had a strategy not to spend a lot of energy. It was not my plan to lose it; other teams made me lose it,” Dumoulin explained.
“Victor Campenaerts tried to go in the breakaway, but BMC closed it every time, so then I knew they were going to go for the intermediate sprint to try to take the seconds there,” Dumoulin said.
“It’s never nice to lose a jersey but maybe in three weeks’ time, we’ll say it was better to that, because now we can save the team a bit more and I can save my time a little more – I’m going straight to the hotel after this – so it could be an advantage.”
“I expected this. I said this morning it was a possibility that they could try to take the jersey, and I said if it happened, we would not do everything to keep them from doing it,” Dumoulin said. “It would cost a lot of energy, and it’s a three-week race.”
