Suffering with heart arrhythmia for several years, Robert Gesink eventually decided to undergo a minor operation to solve the problem after his heart condition forced him out of the Vuelta al Pais Vasco one month ago. Only a week after the successful surgery, the Belkin rider was back on his bike at the altitude training camp and didn’t exclude his participation in this year’s Tour de France edition.

“It doesn’t mean I start the Tour but I also don’t discard taking part this year,” Gesink wrote in his Telegraaf news paper column on Friday.

“I want to see how things go at altitude. From previous years I know what training and which tests I have to do to start the Tour de France in good form. But I will also be aware not to start catching up with everything too fast so I would start the Tour already exhausted. If that is the case, the Vuelta might be a better option. Answers to those questions will come to me in the upcoming weeks.”

Gesink enjoyed a promising start to 2014 season with sixth place in Santos Tour Down Under and fifth in the Tour of Oman, but his heart condition forced the 27-year old Dutchman out of the right track again at the Vuelta al Pais Vasco and that was when the Belkin rider decided to eventually solve his health problem.

“Only after the second attempt they were able to induce the arrythmia and found out what caused it. It was easy to solve and it was the best possible outcome I could have had,” Gesink writes.

“Maybe I should have had it done earlier but the arrhythmia didn’t occur often and why have surgery when several cardiologists told me it’s 100 per cent harmless. It’s quite a procedure to have and always carries risks with it.”

For a long time Gesink was against any surgical intervention, but he changed his mind when his heart arrhythmia forced him out of the 2013 edition of the Giro d’Italia on the penultimate day while sitting 12th in the general classification.

“It was only after the Giro when it happened again and when it also caused hyperventilation that my thoughts about it changed. I told myself that the next time it happened, I would take action.” That was in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco in April of this year.

“One thing is clear. This was not caused by stress, like some media wrote. Even if I weren’t a procyclist this would have happened. But I have closed this chapter now and that is a huge relief.”