Just over five weeks after breaking his collar bone in a terrible training crash near his home in Cork, Eddie Dunbar won a stage of the An Post Rás, his first ever UCI win.
And a week on from that, the 19 year-old was in the US racing the Philadelphia International Classic, another UCI race that attracted the best riders from all across the US and Canada as well as Spain and south America.
The Axeon Hagens Berman man was best of the Irish on the day, crossing the line in 17th place just 18 seconds behind winner Eduard Prades of the Caja Rural-Seguras RGA team.
It’s been an interesting road back to fitness for Dunbar as he now sets his sights on the national championships in Wicklow at the end of the month.
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Here, his coach John Sharples of Trainsharp outlined just what Dunbar did beween his crash in Banteer and the stage win in Baltinglass.
Photos by John Coleman of DC Images
Dunbar receives a congratulatory handshake from teammate Christopher McGlinchey in Baltinglass after winning stage seven of the An Post Rás last month.
By Jonn Sharples
There aren’t many professional cyclists that haven’t broken a collarbone; it is part-and-parcel of being a cyclist.
Eddie Dunbar was one of the many that suffered the injury recently after coming a cropper on a training ride near his home in Banteer.
The incident happened a year after breaking his left collarbone in the Tour of Yorkshire.
Our initial reaction to hearing the news was ‘how badly did he break it’?
If you get lucky and it is a relatively simple, transverse break you can be back on the bike in a couple of days.
In other cases, with a compound, displaced bone, the healing process is a lot longer.
Eddie’s break wasn’t the cleanest, but a successful surgery at the hands of a skilled surgeon meant he was able to get back into the swing of things pretty quickly.
Our job was to ensure Eddie was as relaxed and panic-free as possible during this process.
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Understandably, he was a little aggrieved at the situation as his chances of riding the Tour of California – a major season goal of his – were slashed.
Panic is the first thing to control. Once you explain to the rider that it isn’t the end of the world, the rehab process is much smoother.
Acting as a buddy to bounce ideas off and chat to is as much a coach’s job as telling a rider what training session to do. It’s not all turbo sessions and barking instructions!
We got Eddie back on the bike less than a week after the incident, but to begin with, it was all easy riding indoors.
He still clocked 10 and a half hours of riding in his first week back, six days after breaking the bone - not bad with some new metalwork drilled into you!
Making a positive out of the injury was the priority.
One of the biggest challenges a young rider has to deal with is the sheer number of races they have to do.
Often, racing starts as early as February and runs right through to the end of September/October.
Without much opportunity for some R&R, sometimes an enforced period of rest can be a god-send for the youngsters.
To this end we were able to plan in an extra ‘peak’ to Eddie’s plan.
Resetting the training in April we used the rest period to work on the basics again – steady rides, leg strength efforts, and generally enjoying the bike (café rides, seeing friends and family etc.).
That was before setting Eddie up for his new target, the An Post Rás.
With some enjoyable turbo sessions to pass the time mixed with some race-specific turbo sessions tailored to replicate the style of racing at the Rás, he was itching to get back to racing.
Sure enough he was firing on all cylinders at the race.
And save for some bad luck with a puncture in the closing stages of stage 4 we are confident he could achieved a podium position.
Thanks for reading.
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