"That guy got the shock of his life": Tom Dumoulin recounts the one time he had "way too much fun" during his career

The cycling fans saw Tom Dumoulin win time trials at both the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in 2016, as well as become Olympic silver medallist in the discipline, just a year prior to his 2017 breakthrough as he won the Giro and became world ITT champion. But his start to the season ten years ago was anything but professional which took its tool on one unfortunate doping commisaire.

"Carnival plays a big role in my life, but it always coincides with the start of the season," Dumoulin opens his story on the podcast Stamcafé Koers. "So I could never go, and I certainly couldn't go just to enjoy a beer."

In 2016, however, Dumoulin did go, after experiencing a winter where things didn't go entirely smoothly:

"Because of that difficult period and because all my friends were going, I thought: I'm going along. And I'm going all-in. I didn't drink just one beer that day, but several. It was quite a lot of beers. The following weekend I had to ride my first race of the season, the Tour of Oman," he explains.

Dumoulin dressed up as White Walker (a fictional race) from the fantasy series Game of Thrones. "And he is really very scary, haha. I then came home completely wasted around four in the morning and I was too drunk to take the makeup off. I just flopped into bed and thought: I'll change those sheets tomorrow. I went to sleep," said Dumoulin.

Until the alarm went off at seven o'clock. "There was a doping control officer standing at the door... I walked downstairs with my drunken head and opened the door, unaware of my painted face. That guy got the shock of his life, because White Walker was suddenly standing right in front of him," laughs Dumoulin.

A few days later, Dumoulin was present for his season debut in Middle East where he performed commendably as he clearly recovered well from that hangover. "I finished fourth in the general classification in Oman. Carnival had done its thing, but that was actually the only time I let everything go," he concludes.