Michael Woods said he experienced his own “Tom Dumoulin moment” during Monday’s tenth stage of the Tour de France. The Israel-Premier Tech rider, who was in the breakaway, ran into a camper to relieve himself.
Dumoulin caused a stir in the queen stage of the 2017 Giro d’Italia by getting off his bike and pooping on the side of the road. The Dutch pink jersey wearer lost more than two minutes to his competitors, but eventually still won the Giro.
Woods says he had intestinal problems on Monday, just like Dumoulin. When the 38-year-old Canadian had to let his fellow escapees go on a mountain, he decided to do something about the “oppressive feeling in his stomach.”
“I tried to keep breathing and cycling, but I suddenly realized that I was experiencing my own Dumoulin moment,” Woods writes on his own site. “But ‘number two’ on the side of the road during the Tour is not really possible. There are too many people. Even peeing is a challenge.”
“I thought to myself: am I really going to poop my pants now? But then I came to the clear realization that campers have toilets. And there are more campers in the Tour than at the Burning Man festival. I drove to a camper and screamed in French: toilette, toilette, toilette!”
Woods apologizes to camper owner
Woods immediately received help. “I want to thank the kind, astonished man. At the same time, I want to offer my deep apologies for the state in which I left his toilet. Let’s just say that 120 grams of carbohydrates per hour – and that for four hours in a row – does not leave the body pleasantly.”
“A crowd of confused fans looked at me as I left the camper in shame and got on my bike. I had no idea where I was in the race. I was in the camper longer than I actually want to admit.”
Woods was eventually picked up by a group of riders, including Julian Alaphilippe. “I told him I had no idea whether we were in front of or behind the peloton. I explained why and we could both laugh hard about it.”