For Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) the opening six days of the Giro d’Italia worked like a dream. The Dutchman spent six days in the leader’s pink jersey and looked like a serious contender for the overall win. However, Dumoulin suffered a miserable couple of days in Tuscany. On Saturday, he lost the overall lead on the road to Arezzo, and on Sunday he was troubled by the rain soaked conditions during his main objective on the Giro, the stage 9 time trial in Chianti.

Meanwhile, a nasty saddle sore was severely hampering his prospects of Giro glory. After losing 13 minutes and all hopes at Sestola when the Giro resumed after the rest day, he abandoned the race at Piacenza d'Adige, 94 kilometres into Wednesday's stage 11.

"This morning, I knew already it would make very little sense and the first kilometres on the bike made me realise that it would make no sense," Dumoulin told Cyclingnews at the finish in Asolo. "I tried to help the team a bit until the feed zone, we were hoping to have a good break on the front so that Nikias Arndt could win today. That's all I could do today and then I went out in the feed zone."

With ten days remaining of the race and having conceded more than a quarter of an hour, Dumoulin saw little reason to delay the unavoidable.

Coming into the Giro, Dumoulin made a point of playing down his expectations, emphasizing that he entertained little hope of entering Turin clad in pink. And while Dumoulin momentarily appeared to nurture thoughts of a high overall finish at the Giro after his attack at Roccaraso, the time trial at the Rio 2016 Olympics is and always was at the centre of his season.

Dumoulin's makeshift 2016 calendar had him scheduled to participate in the Tour de Pologne in July – squeezed in between two altitude training camps – as his final preparation race for the Olympics, but his early withdrawal from the Giro could prompt a rethink of his build-up to Brazil.

"We had two plans ready. One was the most likely, with altitude camps and Poland, and the other is to do the Tour de France, which was quite unlikely. Now it changes a bit, everything is open now. I just want to take a few days off and not think about cycling, and then we'll have a look after those few days at what we're going to do towards Rio."