By Shane Stokes
Eddie Dunbar may have only ridden one Grand Tour thus far in his career, but his potential as a three week rider has been underlined by promising comparisons with three big stars which have previously ridden for his team.
In 2016 Adam Yates finished fourth overall and was best young rider in the Tour de France. Two years later his brother Simon won the Vuelta a España while with the-then Mitchelton-Scott squad. And in 2016 Esteban Chaves was second in the Giro d’Italia and third in the Vuelta a España.
Each of those are superb results from a trio now described as having similar abilities to Dunbar. The Irishman's new coach, Alex Camier, has spoken to stickybottle about how the physiological data Dunbar produces compares to that of the Yates brothers and Chaves.
Advertisement
“In short, I think Eddie’s potential on paper seems very good,” said Camier. “His capacity as an athlete is impressive. As a team, we’ve a lot of data on riders who are high 50 kilos, sub 60 kilos. We’ve had three GC guys come through the team in that weight category, so we have some good data around that size of athlete.
“He’s as impressive as any of the best of those, very comparable. On paper, he’s very good. I think his potential is exciting, so we’ll see….”
The comparison between Dunbar’s stats and those of the Yates brothers and Chaves will give the Corkman a lot of encouragement, even if he knows that it will be important to translate theoretical potential into solid results.
This year is the first time he’ll have a chance to confirm that potential. Until now he’s been tasked with riding for others while part of the Team Sky/Ineos Grenadiers squad. Even if he was able to seize opportunities last season in winning the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali and Tour de Hongrie, it is only now as part of Jayco AlUla that he will consistently get the chances that his ability warrants.
For Camier, the situation is exciting. It is also one which should bring a lot of clarity in the months ahead.
“We need to see him in some bike races,” he said. “The on-paper side of things is very encouraging, but we haven’t got race experience with Eddie yet. That is where we’ll have a shakeout and we’ll understand how things are.
“We will see him under different stressful situations in racing. That’s really where we can start to tease into where we need to improve more, where things are particularly good or where things are lacking a bit. Until we get there, we’re just reliant on the fact that his physiology is very good.
“He won a couple of races last year, so he obviously knows how to win a bike race, which is great. We just need to expose him to the stresses of racing, which is what we’re lacking at the moment.”
"His professionalism as an athlete is very good"
Had things gone to plan, Dunbar would already have provided Camier and the team’s management with some real world feedback of his leadership abilities. He began his season on February 1st in the Volta a la Valenciana stage race, and was due to compete in the UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico after that.
However a crash on stage one of the Volta a la Valenciana caused a hand injury which forced him out of the race prior to stage two. He was subsequently confirmed as having a fracture and has been out of racing ever since. It’s of course impossible to know how he would have performed, but how was his form going into first race?
“Very good on paper,” Camier answered. “There’s nothing to indicate that he wouldn’t have been very competitive there, other than we hadn’t been to a race.
“His feedback from the one stage he did do was that he felt extremely comfortable on the climbs, even though he was nursing a broken hand. He was able to ride from the back to the front on one particular climb where he had an issue and said he felt quite comfortable doing that. So the form was very good.”
Other than that, it is hard to be precise about how that first race would have gone.
“When it comes down to the nitty gritty in the finals, it’s hard to know how someone will perform,” Camier elaborated. “But in general, you can make a bold statement to say they will or won’t be front group, and then beyond that, it gets a little bit harder to understand where they will finish up in that group. Because ultimately, we don’t know what the competition are doing.”
Still, things had been very encouraging heading into the 2023 season.
Related News
“Up until that point, we had a really smooth run. From essentially the last week of October, from when I’ve been working with him, we had a really good run all the way up until Volta Valencia. There was just a very small amount of illness that didn’t really impact anything.
“His professionalism as an athlete is very good, his ability to work to a programme, his ability to provide meaningful feedback too. All those things have really impressed. What we’re lacking is race exposure to turn all that into what we need to know a bit more.”
"We can definitely get to Giro in condition to have a good race"
Much Dunbar’s solid work over the winter months might have been lost had his injury been more severe. Breaking a leg would have sidelined him completely from training for weeks. Fortunately, the nature of his fracture meant that he was able to continue working hard on a home trainer.
He took an easy week after his crash to allow everything to settle down, but from that point he started building things up once again. “He hasn’t really missed a beat,” his coach says.
“He’s been limited to how he can ride, i.e. he’s not allowed out the saddle very much, he shouldn’t load the hand too much. However, he’s ticked the boxes really well. We’re just sort of passenger to the recovery. That’s all we can really say about it at the moment.
“It is a bump in the road. We are limited in terms of some of the stimulus that we can do. But we’re now trying to find the solution to get the best way back from the injury.”
Camier was speaking in advance of Dunbar’s hand operation on March 8th. The Corkman had tried to return to training on the road but when he experienced a lot of pain, had deeper examinations done of his hand. That led to surgery, and he’s now back training again.
He is scheduled to return to competition in the Volta a Pais Vasco on April 3rd. That will begin one month and three days before the Giro, giving him some time to fine-tune his form in advance of his big season goal.
It’s not the preparation he would have liked, but does Camier believe he can still be a GC contender in the Italian Grand Tour?
“I think we can definitely get to the Giro in condition to have a good race,” he answered. “But it is fair to say that if Pays Basques is his first race of the season, he’ll have then been effectively riding with injury for seven weeks or more, eight weeks even. So for sure, it’s a limitation.
“But at the same time, we’re balancing that limitation as well as possible. It’s unlikely he could be in his best condition, but how far away from that we’ll have to wait and see. It really depends on how these next few weeks go. It really just depends on how quickly he can make progress.”
At 26, Dunbar still has the best years of his career ahead of him. Many riders don’t near their peak until their late 20s, with steady progression possible until then. This scope for improvement should be heightened with Dunbar as he hasn’t yet had the chance to be a designated team leader and also because he has just one Grand Tour to his credit.
He rode the Giro d’Italia in 2019, finishing third on a stage and 22nd overall. He can realistically expect to make strides as an athlete as he racks up more three week races.
It is often said by riders that competing in a Grand Tour raises them to a new level for the following season. Dunbar will take encouragement from that, and even more so as he has the opportunity to also do the Vuelta a España this year.
If one Grand Tour will bring him on, two could be of an even greater benefit.
“That is the plan,” Camier said. “If we can get to the start line at the Giro, however that may be, that’s going to be a bit of a win for Eddie’s development. Getting him through a Grand Tour, which he obviously hasn’t done since 2019, would be a big win. If he’s in condition to start the Giro that’s going to be a big box tick. And then there’s potential for another opportunity at the Vuelta at the end of the year.”
Looking further ahead, does Camier see Dunbar as a rider who could be a real GC contender in a Grand Tour?
“Yes, on paper that is conceivable,” he answered. “Absolutely. Like I say, there’s a lot to work to be the complete package of a GC rider these days.
“We know he can do well in one week races. We know we know he has great physiology. We know he’s very professional guy. We can we can say those things, for sure. But racing is racing. We need to see him in a three week race. Let’s get him that exposure and then we can analyse it a bit more clearly.”
