An Post-Chainreaction manager Kurt Bogaerts says he is keen to sign Eddie Dunbar, who now moves on to the U23 ranks after two great years as a junior. But with Rapha Condor JLT also keen to sign the teenager, it looks like Bogaerts may not get his wish; seen here during a team talk with his riders on the An Post Rás this year.
An Post Chainreaction manager, Kurt Bogaerts has said he has every intention of keeping his current batch of Irish riders for 2015 but added it would be difficult to bring Eddie Dunbar to the team.
Bogaerts, who is assisting the Irish team this week in Ponferrada at the World Championships, believes the team would be good for Dunbar but only if the teenager took the same view.
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“I think it will be difficult to get him,” he said yesterday.
“I think it will depend on whether his environment sees me as the right step and in my opinion it would be the right step.”
Dunbar has won the junior tours of Wales and Ireland, won the national road and time trial title and led Ireland at the World Championships today, as well as scoring a runner up slot in a Nations Cup stage race in Germany in the summer.
His results have attracted attention from other outfits aside from An Post-Chainreaction. One of those includes Rapha Condor JLT. It has long been interested in signing him up. If Dunbar did join the UK-based Continental team he would join fellow Irish internationals Jack Sadler and Felix English on the roster.
Dunbar would be joining Felix English if he signed for Rapha Condor JLT; a team he has been speaking to for some time now.
An Post’s Bogaerts, who has managed a lot of the top young Irish riders in recent years, said if Dunbar joined his squad a tough year would await.
“But that tough year is going to mean that he wins the year after. If he’s going to get kicked next year in my team everyone will say ‘Kurt is killing him’. But (I wouldn’t be) killing him.
“I know he is mentally capable of it. But is his environment mentally capable of him not winning; even though he’s going to win the year after?
“I would really like him. He is a guy with a great engine and I would change my programme for him.
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“We have a very classic programme with Niko (Eeckhout) and we have a lot of opportunities there. But we changed (our programme) a lot this year already to hillier races.
“Etoile de Besseges would suit Dunbar. Marseillaise would suit him but I would go to a Bretagne or Tour de Alsace because it would also suit my other riders to get stronger.
“I see in Ryan (Mullen) as a potential one-week stage race winner, so I need to develop his climbing; when you climb better, your time trial is better.”
Bogaerts said the team is like a family, where he tries to tailor his approach to meet the needs of each rider.
“With Ryan during the Tour of Britain; every day I said to him, ‘kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself’,” he said.
“I was riding next to him in the car and he says, ‘I’m fucked’. I say ‘you’re not, you’re not dropped yet, come on, up’.
“I know what riders I have and what I can do with them,” adding he believed he understood each personality on the team and how to manage them best.
“I differentiate; I didn’t treat Mullen like I treated Bennett. I didn’t treat (Shane) Archbold like I treated Bennett.
“Everybody is different and everybody has a different vision of me. Some need to have a pint the day before the race to relax, some are in the zone. You need to know that. That's the way I am."
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