Tom Dumoulin brutally honest after Thymen Arensman loses time in opening stage: "If you are dropped as a podium candidate while there are fifty men riding for it, it is just not good"

The opening stage of Giro d'Italia had unsurprising winner in Mads Pedersen. However that some GC favourites would already lose time purely on poor performance was quite surprising. Thymen Arensman certainly didn't want to see 2024 (when he lost four minutes in the opening weekend) repeat. Yet now he's a minute and half down with two more hard stages to come on Albanian soil.

"To be completely honest: if you are dropped as a podium candidate while there are fifty men riding for it, it is just not good," said Dumoulin as Eurosport analyst during first stage. "It is a great shame for him, because I think he expects a lot more from it himself. Especially after that good Tour of the Alps and a very good Paris-Nice. I think he was here with a lot of self-confidence and should have been, but then this is just a disappointment. We cannot avoid that."

"I thought it was a really special conversation we had. Thymen sometimes got in his own way, but this spring I really had the feeling that he made a switch in how he approached the sport. I think that's really nice to see. I hope that he will one day succeed in winning that Giro and that I will no longer be the last Dutch Giro winner. That would be really nice, but it will become increasingly difficult after today."

"I am not a mental coach, I can only give advice from my person. It sounds very stupid, but he has nothing to lose now. The best advice I got from Laurens ten Dam, the year I won the Giro, was: 'Tom, you only have one task in this Giro: cycle full throttle from A to B. I don't care what happens, I don't care if you have to poop or if you have bad legs, I don't care, but you cycle full throttle to the finish.'"

"That would be my advice to Thymen now: you lose a minute and a half, that sucks and you are of course very disappointed, but you can do nothing else than give everything again tomorrow. Then we will take stock after three weeks. He has my number. I don't want to impose myself, but if he needs me, he can always call me. He knows that too."