Eddie Dunbar goes into just the third Grand Tour of his career this weekend at La Vuelta, which he starts with a new-found status in the pro peloton after his 7th place finish at the Giro. And rather than resting on his laurels for the season, the Corkman says he is in Spain in a bid to finish the three-week race stronger than his showing in Italy back in May.
At the Giro he was as high as 4th overall with just three stages remaining before slipping a little, to 7th, by the time the race ended. This time around, Dunbar says his training and final race before La Vuelta went very well and he was now looking to advance further at the Vuelta.
He believed there were as may as 13 general classification at this Vuelta, such is the climbing in the race. And the Team Jayco AlUla GC leader has his eye on two especially big days, saying he must be "on it" on those stages in particular, especially as he believes the line-up of favourites looks as strong as a Tour de France field.
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“My training has been going good after Poland and I’ve been putting in a few finishing touches to my training and I’m looking forward to getting started in Barcelona," he said, in reference to Saturday's TT that will get hostilities underway.
"The course is fairly difficult this year, I think on paper there can be 13 ‘GC days’, so it’s going to be intense all three weeks and you’re going to have to be switched on all the time. The stages look a bit shorter than the Giro, but like I said, I think it will be more intense racing with steeper climbs.
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"The Tourmalet and L’Angliru will be decisive stages and it will be important to be ‘on it’ during those days. It looks like a stacked GC field, it almost looks like the Tour de France, and it will be interesting to see how it is raced. I’ve only ever watched the Vuelta on TV, but it’s going to be a different race to the Giro I expect.
"For me it’s just about going in and doing our best like we did at the Giro and we have a good squad to do that. The aim is to be there or thereabouts in the GC again, in the Giro it went pretty good, I was up there on the hard stages and if we can repeat that at the Vuelta and finish off a bit stronger, I think a good GC result can be on the cards for sure.”
Three-time Vuelta winner, Primož Roglič, is back and is joined by co-team leader, and Tour de France champion, Jonas Vingegaard. Last year’s Vuelta winner, and world TT champion, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) also returns. João Almeida, leads a UAE Team Emirates team that also includes Juan Ayuso and Jay Vine while Enric Mas (Team Movistar) is also in the field.
Ineos Grenadiers goes into the race with Geraint Thomas, Thymen Arensman and Egan Bernal while Romain Bardet is present for Team dsm-firmenich, which also has young British riders Max Poole and Oscar Onley. Bahrain-Victorious will hope Mikel Landa and Damiano Caruso can shine.
Bora-hansgrohe has Aleksandr Vlasov, Sergio Higuita, Lennard Kämna and Cian Uijtdebroeks (20). Groupama-FDJ has French young guns Romain Grégoire and Lenny Martinez while Giulio Ciccone leads the GC challenge for Lidl-Trek and Hugh Carthy is EF Education-EasyPost leader.
