Tom Dumoulin shares hilarious drinking story: “That doping tester was scared senseless”

Tom Dumoulin has told a lovely old story on the Stamcafé Koers podcast. As a true Limburger, he went to celebrate carnival in 2016 during his active cycling career, but the next morning he was woken early for a doping control. Ten years later, Dumoulin tells the tale with relish to his Belgian colleagues.

“Carnival plays a big role in my life, but it always coincides with the start of the season,” Dumoulin begins. “So I could never really go, and I certainly could never go to have a nice beer.”

In 2016, he did just that, after a winter in which not everything had gone his way. “Because of that difficult period, and because all my friends were going, I thought: I’m going too. And I’m going all in. I did not drink just one beer that day, but more. Quite a lot of beers, actually. The weekend after that I had my first race of the season, the Tour of Oman,” he explains.

Dumoulin dressed up as a White Walker from Game of Thrones. “And that is really scary, haha. I then came home absolutely plastered around four in the morning and I was too drunk to even take the make-up off. I just flopped into bed and thought: I’ll change the sheets tomorrow. I went to sleep,” Dumoulin said.

Then the alarm went off at seven. “There was a doping control officer at the door... I walked downstairs with my drunken head and opened the door, without realising what my painted face looked like. The guy was scared senseless, because a White Walker was suddenly standing in front of him,” Dumoulin laughs.

A few days later, he therefore began his season, in which he would eventually win silver at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. “I still finished fourth overall in Oman. Carnival did its thing, but that was actually the only time I ever really let everything go.”

Author: David Bavin-Hobbs - [email protected]