Sometimes, the cards won't fall your way no matter what. And whenever Jayco-AlUla climber Eddie Dunbar weighs up his chances of success in the last mountain stage of the Vuelta a España on Saturday, the Irishman can't help believing the odds of repeating 2024's spectacular last-minute victory at Picón Blanco are severely limited.
Rewind 12 months, and Dunbar had already broken a longstanding drought on top-level success with his first Grand Tour stage win in the second week of the Vuelta. But if his win from a break in Padron in Galicia had much of opportunism in his lengthy last-kilometre sprint for the line on a hilly stage, his victory at Picón Blanco ten days later was a much more textbook high mountains lone charge away from the main pack of GC contenders.
