Having lost significant time over the last two days at Tour of the Basque Country, Eddie Dunbar (Team Jayco AlUla) is well out of the general classification hunt but is still hoping this week can propel him forward.
Dunbar crashed out of Tirreno-Adriatico (2.UWT) almost a month ago, with Basque Country his comeback race. And though his lack of condition has been exposed, especially on Wednesday, he is not over-reacting.
“I was an absolutely brutal day,” Dunbar said of Wednesday’s stage 3 when he lost over 12 minutes, ending any hopes he may have of a general classification result.
“There was no let-up all day, the peloton didn’t ease up at any point. I was flat out all day and you could see there was, what, nine or ten guys went to the finish and they were clearly the strongest guys.”
Dunbar added a lot of riders suffered on the stage, including himself, saying it was just one climb too long for him.
“Obviously I lost a good bit of time. It’s my first race back after a crash in Tirreno. I expected a little bit more of myself but Basque is never a race you can come to a little bit under-done.
“You find out pretty quickly where your condition is and I’m a bit off the pace. But hopefully I’ll get better as the days go on.”
He added he was very hopeful of coming out of this week with some form towards his next goals.
“I’ve Tour of the Alps the week after this. So hopefully the legs are good, I can recover well and go to Alps and pick up a result there and just go all in then and get ready for the Tour de France.”
Yesterday’s stage 4 saw Dunbar lose more time as he finished 56th some 4:56 down, with Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) also shedding time, though having spent most of the stage up the road in a breakaway.
Healy had also shed over 12 minutes on stage 3, said his team mate Hugh Carthy had helped him back on after he got into difficulty.
Though he initially said he felt good, he later punctured at a bad time, adding he didn’t have the legs to overcome that setback and get back to the bunch again. However, he was putting his form down to a bad day rather than any deeper problem.
