This season, Tom Dumoulin improved himself and won four time trial. He finished too second at the Baloise Belgium Tour and the Tour of Alberta, third at the Eneco Tour and fifth at the Tour de Suisse. But he didn’t win the title of Dutch rider of the year. He was disappointed, but he understood this choice, according to CyclingNews. ”I would have been even more proud if it weren’t for the big discussion that happened afterwards,” Dumoulin told Cyclingnews recently of the award. ”But in the end I’m proud that I won and it’s a good motivation also for the coming season to make another step and become a better rider.”

During Worlds in Ponferrada, Tom Dumoulin ended his season with a great performance: a third place at the individuel time trial, just behind Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) and Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-Quick Step): "There was actually a bit of pressure on me, both from the outside and from myself. I’d been doing really good TTs the whole year and I knew that I had a normal or a good day it would be very possible to get a medal," Dumoulin said. "I was really nervous but in the end I had a really good day and I came pretty close to Tony and Wiggins, so that’s also nice to see for the future."

He is a good time trial rider, but he is too a good one day race rider. He finished sixth at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal and twelfth during the Strade Bianche. At the Ardennes classics, he had a good results too (20th at the Amstel Gold Race, 21h at La Flèche Wallonne). For to have best results, maybe he will have to choose between time trial and one day races. "It’s a bit unusual but until now, it’s still good," he said. "Before the Worlds for example, I focused on the Worlds also but also on my endurance in classics and that showed in Canada where I had a good result [2nd in the GP de Québec – ed.] So I think the combination is possible although in the future maybe I will focus on different things at different parts of the season: in the spring, I’ll focus maybe more on the classics and at the end of the year maybe more on the time trial for the Worlds. For me and the people around me, it’s really difficult to say where it’s ending or where my capabilities stop, but I’d like to combine the two things."

In 2015, Dumoulin will lead Giant-Alpecin’s Ardennes Classics roster with Simon Geschke and the French Warren Barguil. And the next summer, he would like without doubt to wear the yellow jersey after winning the first stage, a 16km time trial that he describes as "not too technical and really fast".

"That’s a difficult question and I’m not going to answer it I think," he said. "Wiggins isn’t doing it I think but Tony was definitely better than me last year but it’s up to me to make that step up to where I can really be a rival of Tony in the future. I of course hope that it’s going to happen in the coming year but I just can say it’s a big goal and I’ll try to be at my best form and then I’ll see. It’s a really good course for me, the perfect distance actually and I hope to do really well there."