There is an expression that Eddie Dunbar has been repeating almost like a mantra since his move from Ineos to Jayco-Alula at the beginning of last season: “I need to back myself more.” It turns out he was right.
Five kilometres from the summit of Picón Blanco, at the end of the toughest stage of the Vuelta a España, Dunbar attacked with purpose from the red jersey group on gradients that occasionally grazed 18%. First, the Irishman caught and passed his former teammate Pavel Sivakov, then he resisted a dogged pursuit from David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), but he knew the day’s favourites had yet to move.
In those interminable final two kilometres, while he was managing a buffer that flitted between 12 and 15 seconds, Dunbar kept looking over his shoulder to survey the men stalking him up the mountainside. Every time he looked back, a different grandee seemed to be leading the charge: Enric Mas (Movistar), Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) and even briefly Primož Roglič.
Mikel Landa (TRex-Quickstep) made a sudden surge from the depths of the fractured chasing group to bring them a touch closer in the final kilometre, but Dunbar never wilted. He crossed the line with seven seconds to spare over Mas to claim his second stage win of this Vuelta and the most impressive of his career.
“I knew if I kept riding essentially at threshold, then if someone was going to come across, it was going to take a big effort,” Dunbar explained in the press conference truck afterwards.
“I paced myself really well. It wasn’t until 200m to go that I thought I would hold them off, when I looked back and saw there was a bit of daylight there. It still wasn’t quite enough comfort to celebrate and enjoy it, but I’m not going to complain about that today.”
Dunbar was part of a deep roster of young stage racing talent at Ineos but, absurdly, he was selected for just one Grand Tour during his time at the squad. No matter, some knowledge gleaned from that apprenticeship proved invaluable here. Dunbar had raced up Picón Blanco in the service of Carapaz on the 2020 Vuelta a Burgos, and he understood that the ascent, though harsh, was not as extreme as the razor-sharp profile in the road book suggested.
“I knew the climb from when we did it four years ago in Burgos,” he said. “When you look at the profile, it’s crazy steep, but it’s steep in sections. Sometimes on a profile, it will say there’s a kilometre at 10%, but that could actually mean there’s 400m at 13% and another 600m at 8%.
“So I rode the steep bits pretty hard and then I recovered on the flatter bits, while still holding my speed. I used my head, but I had the legs today and I backed myself. That’s a nice feeling.”
Future
Dunbar arrived at this Vuelta after another season blighted by ill fortune. A crash forced him out of the Giro d’Italia after two stages, and the plan was to make amends by targeting the general classification in Spain, but like many, the Cork man’s overall ambitions wilted in the extreme heat of the opening week. Still, he recalibrated quickly, picking up a maiden Grand Tour stage win from the break in Padrón in the second week.
Yet for all the emotion of that victory, which came after so many hardships, Dunbar described his second Vuelta win as the “sweeter” of the two. His rationale was clear. From his beginnings as an underage rider in Dan Curtin’s stable at Kanturk Cycling Club, Dunbar harboured ambitions of being a stage race rider, an aspiration justified by his 7th place finish at last year’s Giro.
“The first win was never the way I expected to win a Grand Tour stage, I always imagined winning on the top of a climb, either from a breakaway or the GC group,” said Dunbar, though he was reluctant to dwell on what the Picón Blanco victory means for his future as a Grand Tour rider. “I haven’t actually thought about it. It hasn’t really sunk in yet.”
Dunbar thought plenty about his approach to the final ascent up Picón Blanco, which came at the end of a day marked by 5,000m of total climbing and the travails of Roglič’s Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s guard, weakened by illness. The Banteer man resisted the temptation to track Sivakov’s move on the penultimate ascent of Los Tornos, reasoning that his deficit on GC – he now lies 11th at 13:15 – might give him a chance to escape the red jersey group on the final haul to the line.
“I’m twelve minutes down on GC, so I knew I’d get a bit of leeway,” said Dunbar. “I always knew it was going to be a really difficult stage, and I thought a lot of guys were going to be tired today, especially the GC guys, after going to the limit every day. I was never going to be left in the break, but I always believed that I could win today.”
When Dunbar claimed his first victory in Galicia last week, he confessed that he had wondered if he still had a future in cycling after his crash at the Giro in May. Atop Picón Blanco on Saturday, it was easy to couch this Vuelta as a turning point, but Dunbar politely demurred. The terrible beauty of cycling is that it’s never quite as neat as all that.
“I’ve had good times, and I’ve had bad times, and it’s just all part of the process, I think,” Dunbar said. “There’s going to be more ups and there’s going to be more downs, that’s just the way life is. I’ve learned that throughout my career, but moments like this don’t come around too often.”
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