After his impressive showing on the first summit finish of the Giro left many claiming Tom Dumoulin of Giant-Alpecin can win the race, his DS Marc Reef has calmed down some of those claims.

“I don’t think that he’s able to win the Giro d’Italia,” Giant sport director Marc Reef told VeloNews. “Of course, he did well in yesterday’s mountaintop finish, a long one, but you can’t compare it to the Dolomites or Alps, whatever we face in the third week.”

Dumoulin leads most of the GC favourites by almost 45 seconds and has a long time trial tomorrow to build on that lead. But Reef says Dumpulin’s biggest goals come in July and he isn’t in as good a shape as those who are peaking for the Giro.

“The Olympic time trial in August is the goal; that’s why he didn’t go to an altitude camp before the Giro d’Italia. The goal was also the Tour de Romandie, we had those two early goals. The time trials are the focus, the shorter stage races like Paris-Nice, Romandie and later on, the Eneco Tour. Next year, he will focus on the grand tours,” Reef added.

Reef says Dumoulin is still surprising them but urges fans to remember that the stage six summit finish really did suit Dumoulon and it was only a cat 2 climb.

“Everything is possible. It’s difficult to say,” Reef added. “We didn’t prepare for a GC, and he’s kind of surprising us here already with the finish to Roccaraso. But then on a climb like that, it suited him with seven-percent grades, some flats, and three percent in the final.”

Reef pointed out that while Dumoulin doesn’t have anywhere near as good a team with him as the likes of Movistar, Astana or Sky, he has a much better team than the one that rode at the Vuelta with him.

“Here we came with guys who can climb and go longer uphill. Our approach for this Giro was to go for stage results. In that way, we took guys who can climb and ride from breakaways,” Reef continued. “There are always teams interested in the GC or the stage result, and will try something. Tom is in the position now that it is not necessary that we do something. We can hold a little back in that way.”