Dylan O'Brien has already represented his country a number of times and now heads to France to develop further.
By Brian Canty
Second year junior internationals, Eddie Dunbar and Dylan O’Brien will become the latest to join the growing legion of Irish riders on the Continent this year when they join up with French team AC Bisontine in mid-April.
The squad where Dubliner Philip Lavery enjoyed a very successful racing stint last year has also agreed to take on former Nicolas Roche Performance Team - Standard Life riders Danny Bruton and David McCarthy, both of whom leave Ireland in May.
The move for Dunbar and O’Brien came about in recent weeks with the help of well known veteran rider John Horgan and former international Padraig Quinn, while Dunbar’s mentor and coach Dan Curtin also had a hand in it.
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For Dunbar, his departure cannot come soon enough.
“I can’t wait to get out there now; the racing will be brilliant, it’ll be aggressive, hard and hilly but that’s what I want,” said the 17-year-old Junior Tour winner.
There will not be much of a bedding-in period for Dunbar and O’Brien as they will be thrown straight in at the deep end in the Tour Nivernais Morvan stage-race over Easter.
Though they will return to Ireland after that race to complete their Leaving Cert exams in Boherbue and Cobh, respectively, Dunbar said he and O’Brien would be away for most of the year.
“I think that’s where I need to be to improve. After the Leaving Cert I’ll do the Junior Tour and probably go straight to France again after that and I want to stay out there.
“I think the World Championships are hilly again this year and if you saw the results of the French juniors in the Europeans last year, I think they got first, second and fourth.
“So obviously they’re doing something right with the juniors. And maybe if I’m racing against them week in, week out it will bring me on and the races will be harder as well.”
Dunbar won an impressive10 races in 2013 and O’Brien could arguably have won more if he wasn’t so loyal to his O’Leary’s Stone Kanturk teammate.
But O’Brien he rewarded with a slot on the Irish track team which spent a good chunk of the summer racing in Belgium and more is expected of him this year.
The World Championships in Ponferrada, Spain, will be an obvious target for both in the latter end of the season, and Dunbar knows he can take a lot of positives from his performance in Florence in September.
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“I know I probably needed to do more stage races before Florence,” he said.
“The fellas I was racing against had been out there (in Italy) doing a stage race in the lead up to the Worlds. And they were maybe better prepared, whereas Charleville was my last race and that was three weeks before Florence so it maybe came to my disadvantage, but it’s hard to revolve your season around one race.
“I would have liked to have done better but I guess I was due a bad day after all the good days I had. I know damn well that I’m better than 129th, but I won’t let one bad result bring my season down. I have no regrets.”
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On reflection, he then singled out the European Championships as one race where he felt he could have done much better.
“I was eighth first year junior in that race so that’s a confidence booster for this year. But I definitely think I had a medal in me that day, definitely. It was after the Junior Tour and I was confident and I was feeling good.
“My positioning just let me down but I really think I had a medal in me that day. Considering I crashed twice and had to walk up the cobbled climb and my position was shocking as well, but there’s this year again.”
For now, he’s logging the miles, and with Dan Curtin in his ear every day, he knows he cannot rest on his laurels.
“I’ve been doing more training than last year, but I’m not gone mad into it,” states Dunbar.
“Dan is fairly strict on what we do at the moment, he doesn’t want to burn me out. I had a good break in October and in November so I feel refreshed and motivated again.
“Although there are times when it’s pissing rain on a Sunday morning and I’d ring Danny to see is training on, he’d always say it’s on no matter what. So you’d go into Kanturk, it’d be pissing rain and you might do 100k and the sense of achievement after is brilliant.
“Danny would then turn around to me after and say ‘fuck it you’ve done that now, that’s where you win races, these wet mornings where another fella will stay in bed’.”
Eddie Dunbar was the man of 2013 in the Irish junior bunch and with another full season to come in the age group he is hoping for big things (Photo: www.blackumbrella.ie )
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