"Dumoulin's strength thus far has been startling, prompting some to paint him as a latter-day Miguel Indurain, a seemingly perfect prototype with no obvious weaknesses. Or, as Il Corriere della Sera pointedly put it after Oropa, "A placid Frankenstein, too monstrous to be true." The newspaper claimed Dumoulin's power to weight ratio on Oropa to be a huge 6.5kg/W, though the calculation appears to have been based on a body mass of 68 to 69kg. In an interview on RAI television on Sunday, meanwhile, Dumoulin said his weight remained between 70 and 71kg. [..] The terrain in the third week rather harsher. For all that Dumoulin has reputedly focused on coping with the demands of a succession of long climbs in training, racing against one's shadow on Mount Teide is rather different to being attacked on all sides over the Stelvio or the Mortirolo, particularly when the fatigue accrued over the first two weeks is factored into the equation. A tired and ill Dumoulin's concession of the red jersey on the penultimate day of the 2015 Vuelta provides more than a glimmer of hope for Nibali, Quintana and company. [..] with another, 30-kilometre time trial to come on the final day in Milan, Dumoulin's rivals will likely need to put at least five or six minutes into him over the coming week to have any hope of denying him overall victory. [..] If Quintana, Nibali or Pinot are to win this Giro, they instead need to find a way to make Dumoulin crack completely on one stage."
