Tom Dumoulin adds Unbound Gravel on his 2025 bucket list "just to experience it"
GravelWednesday, 09 April 2025 at 09:00
Tom Dumoulin may have retired from professional cycling more than two years ago, but he still likes to stick his head out and compete at less serious compeitions. Is it time for debut on gravel yet?
"I’ll do Unbound," Dumoulin tells Cycling Weekly casually. "But only the 100-mile race" and "just to experience it. I absolutely have no intention of trying to win the thing."
While former teammate Laurens ten Dam is enjoying a second career in gravel racing, Dumoulin will not be following suit. "Laurens is still really competitive but that’s absolutely not my goal. The goal is just to enjoy riding a bike, to have fun and to share that message with the people around me and those who follow me," the 34-year-old says.
"Most people just get on their bikes twice a week, purely for fun, and now and then they take part in an event and enjoy it. And that’s totally fine, too. Actually, I’m one of them now."
His recent adventures suggest there’s still a quiet fire within the Dutchman. At the Egmond-Pier-Egmond event earlier this year, Dumoulin took on the 'combi race' - a 36-kilometre bike race on sand on Saturday, followed by a half marathon on Sunday — and won. Dumoulin laughs, admitting that he did "go deep" both those days. "But it’s not like I trained hard for it or followed a structured plan or anything."
He’s approaching the 90-mile Sea Otter Classic gravel race and the 100-miler at Unbound in a similar fashion. "Of course, I am not unfit. But I’m definitely not lining up at the start with more than 10 hours of training a week, you know? So I’m well aware that I’m not competing for the prizes. And that’s totally fine."
"I have zero desire to sit on a bike for five hours every day. I’ve done that already — it was beautiful, but now it’s time for other things. That said, I still enjoy being part of those events but I’m not going to win them. And yeah, sometimes that’s a bit hard to accept. But I just don’t want to do the hard work anymore."
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- yup, that’s sad. marriage is a tough proposition under the best circumstances. i get the FEELING that one of the reasons why jonas doesn’t race as much as people would like is that he fights to put family first? again, im not in a position to say, but we learn from the mistakes of our colleagues if we’re lucky. in the professional culture i come from, naval aviation, marriages tragically drop like flies and there’s sometimes nothing w we can do about it. but i TIRED to make the little differences where i could and ended up one of the lucky ones.OCexile22-04-2025
- As long as EPO isn't involved, and you swear it's an honest mistake--all good.
Barney22-04-2025 - Everyone knew he was racing for third. But, after a long hard race like that, anything can happen in the sprint.acem8222-04-2025
- Haters gonna hate - that said, it seems unrealistic to believe that Wout has not been permanently impacted by his injuries last year, esp in the VueltaCrashjames22-04-2025
- His ex wife played her cards well.
Front24222-04-2025 - “If you had told me this five months ago, I wouldn't have believed you. I always hoped that I wouldn't become one of those cyclists who got divorced after his career ended. But unfortunately that is the case," he said. The timing was very revealing and as he mentioned, it’s a typical price to pay for being a pro cyclist (among others). It takes a very specific type of partner to accept that life and you can’t always know or see that in advance. The relationship is often “suspended” with the hope of improving upon retirement when you can finally focus on each other, but that’s when you discover new sides of each other and sometimes realise you weren’t compatible. What you said is very often true too unless you’re lucky enough to find the kind of person who sees what makes you unhappy and can help change it (and that only works if not done out of self-interest (such as fear or self preservation) which is often people’s motive for seemingly wanting to help a partner resolve issues).Mistermaumau22-04-2025
- The question is, did he listen? All this media food is just cup half full or empty strategies to make it sound as if they know what they’re doing perfectly. You either play it safe or risky, Tadej seems incapable of playing it safe. Great if P-R recovery went well but maybe it would go even better without one or both of these intermediate races, nobody knows in advance but IF your main goal is LBL then treat it that way and don’t care too much about the others, ride them to prepare for LBL. Not sure that’s what we saw last week and not sure what he’ll do now BUT, why not take a leaf out the book of a master and consider riding this one in support of another team member to give a chance to, it won’t hurt your reputation, on the contrary, as the JP/MVDP combo shows, people appreciate it, and if you imply you MIGHT in advance (obviously no need to warn rivals which strategy you’re going to adopt), nobody is going to criticise you for “losing”.Mistermaumau22-04-2025
- 🤣
KerisVroom22-04-2025 - Regardless, now not only is he relevant again but he’s trapped you and your likers into finding a connection, similarity or point in common between him and Tadej. Funny yes but there is no such thing as bad publicity, all publicity increases relevancy.Jumpyjohn22-04-2025
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