The Dutch sprinter grabbed the headlines after his terrible crash on the first stage of the Tour of Poland, plunging his compatriot Fabio Jakobsen in critical condition. If the organizer of the event, yet singled out for a flagrant lack of security, was spared to the point of receiving the award “Polish sporting event of the year”, Dylan Groenewegen can't say the same. Targeted by many followers, but also by personalities such as Patrick Lefevere, the patron of the Deceuninck Quick Step, since the accident he has become the man to kill for some, to the point of receiving very serious death threats : “I received so many concrete threats that we notified the police a few days after the fall in Poland”, he recently confided to the Dutch site Wielerflits. Threats taken very seriously by the authorities, who have decided to place their home under surveillance : “The following weeks, the police guarded our home. We could no longer spontaneously open the door. If I wanted to go out, an agent was to accompany me”.
It also specifies the content of some of these threats : “We received handwritten letters. In one of them was a noose around which we could hang our child (barely old 1 month, ndlr). When you see this kind of messages, you are afraid”. Jumbo runner Visma says police took the threat seriously and reacted quickly. An extremely difficult situation for Dylan, who already suffered the daily criticisms of many followers. In an interview conducted shortly after the Tour of Poland, he had expressed his remorse, explaining with great emotion that he felt guilty for his rival's injuries, who had spent several weeks in the hospital. Things have since settled down and the two men were able to talk about the accident, but some people continue to hold a disproportionate resentment towards him. Dylan Groenewegen is expected to return to competition next May after his 9 month of suspension, on the occasion of the Tour of Hungary, before focusing on the Vuelta.
