Dylan Groenewegen (; born 21 June 1993) is a Dutch professional road racing cyclist, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam . He has won five individual Tour de France stages and one team time trial stage. He has also won the Dutch National Road Race Championships, five stages of the Tour of Norway, five stages of the Tour of Britain and three stages of Paris–Nice. In 2020, Groenewegen received considerable attention for causing a serious crash at the Tour de Pologne, which put Fabio Jakobsen in hospital, and for which Groenewegen received a nine-month ban from racing.
Early life
Groenewegen was born to a working-class family in Amsterdam. His grandfather, Ko Zieleman (1933–2021), assembled custom bike frames of which Groenewegen received his first bike at the age of seven. Zieleman owned a shop selling bike frames, a trade that his father had started in 1928, which Groenewegen's father, Gerrie, has continued. At the age of 17, Groenewegen went to a trade school in order to follow his previous three generations as a frame-builder.
Career
Pre-World Tour
Groenewegen said in an interview that he had to choose between or to join in 2014. He chose the former as they gave him "a lot of confidence".
LottoNL–Jumbo (2016–2021) In October 2015, Groenewegen announced that he had signed with , on an initial three-year deal from 2016.
2016
In June, Groenewegen won the Dutch National Road Race Championships after outsprinting Wouter Wippert. During a review of Groenewegen's Bianchi Oltre XR4 bicycle, Simon Richardson of Global Cycling Network said he is "a very easy rider to work with" in respect to the mechanics. Groenewegen won stage 4 of the Tour of Britain.
2017
In the Dubai Tour, which ran from late January into early February, Groenewegen came second in the general classification, having finished second in stages 1 and 2. Despite narrowly missing out on victory in these areas, he did win the overall youth classification. On 28 April, Groenewegen won the first stage of the Tour de Yorkshire. The stage, which was long from Bridlington to Scarbrough, came down to a photo finish where he held off Australian sprinter Caleb Ewan. He came fourth on the second stage which finished in Harrogate. He continued this success when in May, he won two stages at the Tour of Norway.
The Tour de France started well for Groenewegen when he came fifth on stage 2, the first flat stage. He produced two more top-10 results in the first week, with sixth in stages 6 and 7. After two mountain stages and a rest day in Dordogne, he returned to finish third on stage 10 – a route from Périgueux to Bergerac. Groenewegen won the final stage of the race on the last stage on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
2018
In February, Groenewegen competed in the Dubai Tour and won stage 1. Groenewegen held the general classification lead until the third stage when he was penalised 20 seconds after illegally drafting behind his team's car after suffering a mechanical fault. The blue jersey, given to the race leader, was lost to Elia Viviani who started the day two seconds behind Groenewegen, who dropped out of the top 10. He expressed his anger, saying "I had problems with my bike, the mechanicals fucked it up for me. I actually think it was a good decision by the judges but it fucked it up for me" before placing the blame on his mechanics, saying that "it's the fault of my mechanics".
In the Tour de France, Groenewegen won stage 7 after beating Fernando Gaviria and Peter Sagan, both of whom had won two stages to that point in the tour. The stage was the longest in the tour at which started in Fougères and finished in Chartres, Northern France. Groenewegen also won stage 8, beating Sagan and John Degenkolb in Amiens. In an interview, Groenewegen said that the sprint was "a bit messy" but he said that he "surged ahead" and took advantage of the "good opportunity".
2019
In March, Groenewegen won the first two stages of Paris–Nice. On the second stage, he found himself at the head of the race in a group of 23 riders about from the finish line, and ended up winning the stage after another split left just 7 riders contesting for the win. Later in March, he won the Three Days of Bruges–De Panne, out sprinting Gaviria and Viviani after squeezing through a gap between Gaviria and the barrier in order to open up his sprint.