Eddie Dunbar is in China at the moment and he is not ruling out riding a Grand Tour with Team Sky next year despite his age.
Eddie Dunbar, Team Sky and Grand Tours in 2019
Ireland's Eddie Dunbar maintained his 12th place overall in the Tour of Guangxi (2.UWT) earlier today.
At the end of the 212km stage 5 from Liuzhou to Guilin there was just over 50 riders left in the peloton.
Dunbar was among them and placed 24th. He was on the same time as stage winner Matteo Trenton (Mitchelton-Scott).
Gianni Moscon, a team mate of Dunbar’s at Team Sky, retained the overall lead. The Italian had claimed the race leader’s jersey by winning yesterday’s queen stage.
Moscon leads overall by nine seconds from Felix Großschartner of Bora-hansgrohe. In third another five seconds back is Sergei Chernetski (Astana).
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Ryan Mullen (Trek-Segafredo) is the only other Irish rider racing in China. He was 105th today at 12:18. The race concludes tomorrow.
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In China Eddie Dunbar was interviewed by Gregor Brown of the ‘Cycling Journos on the Road’ YouTube channel.
He said he was looking forward to a learning opportunity next year, adding much of his U23 career was blighted by injury.
A crash in the Baby Giro last year wiped out the second half of the season. And it took him some time to get back to form having endured a tricky concussion.
Dunbar also broke his collarbone as a first-year U23 rider when riding with NFTO. While he came back quickly from that, it still cost him in races foregone.
And he was now hoping for a clearer run with Team Sky, with more races in 2019 than he rode this year.
Asked if he was too young, having just turned 22 years, to ride a Grand Tour, he wasn’t ruling it out for next year.
“Every year there are younger guys doing Grand Tours,” he said, pointing out his team mate Egan Bernal had already ridden the Tour de France.
“Bernal is a year younger than me and he was in there smashing it in the Tour. Age is a number. When is too young? When is too old? No one knows. We’ll see next year.”
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