Joe Dombrowski is enjoying a deserved off-season after completing the Giro and Tour double and making his Grand Boucle debut in 2022.
The Astana Kazakstan rider was unable to repeat his 2021 Giro d'Italia stage win, but played a big role in helping Vincenzo Nibali finish in the final Corsa Rosa, and soon after, he made his Tour debut in France to France for his Tour debut.
He raced for a total of 68 days, doing the Giro/Tour double, which ended his season early after the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal.
"My takeaway is that doing the Giro/Tour double is not easy. But it was a good season," Dombrowski recently told Cycling News and VeloNews.
After riding the Giro d'Italia, Dombrowski wrote a personal journal entry for Cycling News.
"It was nice to ride my first Tour. In some ways it's no different, but in others it's different. The Tour is a bigger race than cycling. It was good and so was the Giro."
"I didn't win a stage, but I have a few more chances, especially if I'm going for a stage.
Dombrowski had raced 11 Grand Tours before his Tour de France debut, but quickly realized that the Tour was much larger, more prestigious, and more complex, with cobbled stages in Paris-Roubaix and hard races in the Alps and Pyrenees.
"The start in Denmark was really cool. I've never seen a bike race with that kind of atmosphere and crowd," he said, picking his best and worst memories of the 2022 Tour de France.
"I didn't particularly enjoy the Roubaix stage. I don't want to go through that again.
Riding for Nibali in the Giro was another highlight of his 2022 season.
"He's calm and a good guy to race for. He is one of the greatest riders of his generation. I don't know who will come into the team or leave, but I think his absence will be felt," Dombrowski suggested.
Dombrowski raced for Team Sky, EF Education, and UAE Team Emirates before joining Astana Kazakstan in 2022. He won the 2012 Giro Baby, but a problem with his iliac artery forced him to miss most of the 2014 season, hampering his early career. He is under contract with Astana Kazakstan through 2023, but faced the pressure and stress of chasing results and UCI ranking points in 2022. Astana Kazakstan never entered the relegation zone, but the team tried to turn around a difficult season, winning only a handful of races. The two seasons before that we were safe, but if we continue to do what we did this year in the following years, that's a problem for us." Unless you are a Jumbo or an Ineos, you are never safe," Dombrowski stressed. 'We all grudgingly signed up to the current system, but there are a lot of things that just don't make sense. I see riders and teams talking about skipping the Grand Tours and doing smaller races to chase points. To me, it makes sense to put the best riders in the best races. Now a seasoned and respected rider in the peloton, Dombrowski does not expect major changes in the way pro cycling works or its business model. "A lot of the parties involved, like ASO, the teams, and the UCI, are not cooperating. I don't see that changing in my career."
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