By Shane Stokes
A Vuelta a España GC campaign or a Tour de France debut? Those seem to be the possibilities for Eddie Dunbar as he recovers from last Sunday’s crash in the Giro d’Italia.
The Corkman went into the Giro aiming to equal or better his superb seventh overall last year, but withdrew from the race prior to Monday’s stage due to a deep wound under his kneecap. With his patellar tendon reportedly visible through that gash and Dunbar
unable to bend his leg, continuing in the race was not an option.
Now he and his Jayco AlUla team are looking at the rest of the season, and at what he should target instead of the Giro. Could the Tour be an option?
“Look, we spoke about it this morning,” White told stickybottle earlier this week. “It’s not totally out of the question but we've got three climbers for the Tour. And yeah, he’s got a preparation now that would probably allow it.
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“But I think we have to wait and see. Off the top of my head, I’d probably like to see him at the Vuelta first and ride GC again. The idea was to ride the Vuelta anyway, but what we did was going to depend on what we did here in the Giro.
“But now with the Giro out, I would like to see him focus on being at his best really for the Vuelta and have another top crack at the top 10 there.”
White won’t be the only one making that decision. Tour participation will be influenced by others on the team and also by how Jayco AlUla’s other GC contenders are going at the time.
If one or more of those have injury issues or a lack of form, Dunbar could get a call up for his first-ever Tour. At 27 years of age, it’s long overdue.
“It's not 100% out of the question,” White confirms. “We can add his name to the longer list. But I think when we look at the big picture and look at his development as well, I think we’ll gain more out of him going to the Vuelta and riding general classification, than going as a support rider at the Tour.”
Time will tell but, most importantly, his latest fall isn’t expected to keep him out of action for long.
“When he crashed he had a big hole in knee, just under his patella. So that's the reason why he couldn't [continue],” White said. “He's got a pretty stiff shoulder and wrist, but the game changer was the hole in the knee.
“The plan is to obviously heal up this week. The hole in his knee will heal, but it won’t heal riding his bike. I would think you’ll see him probably in the Tour of Switzerland next month.”
'He knows how to come back from little hiccups'
Dunbar has crashed multiple times since early 2023. In February of that year he was caught up in a crash on the opening stage of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, fracturing the hamate bone of his left hand. That required an operation, saw him out of competition for two months, and compromised his preparation for the Giro d’Italia.
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Still, he was one of the strongest riders in the race, sitting to fourth overall with three days remaining, and still finishing seventh in Rome despite being ill. It was the best Irish showing in the race since Stephen Roche’s win in 1987, and hints at what he could achieve if he had a consistent run of racing.
Misfortune resurfaced in the second half of the year. He crashed in the Tour de Pologne and temporarily dislocated his shoulder. He then slid out twice on the soaked city streets of Barcelona in the Vuelta’s opening team time trial, and crashed again on stage five.
That saw him exit the race, a big disappointment as he believed his form was stronger than in the Giro d’Italia.
The frustration continued this year. He suffered a concussion on stage two of the Volta a la Communitat Valenciana in February, and then crashed out of the UAE Tour on the opening stage, damaging his hand. Leaving the Giro with another injury will compound his frustration.
“I’ve been waiting a few years now for my luck to change,” he said after that UAE Tour crash in February. “Obviously last year it kind of started to change at the Giro. It’s trying to get a run to get to 100 percent of my potential. I still don’t know what that feels like.”
White understands his frustration, and feels for Dunbar.
“He certainly hasn’t had the luck of the Irish, has he?” he told stickybottle. “It’s a shame, because it’s two years in a row that he’s had to work his way back through pretty unorthodox preparation to get to the Giro. Last year, he ended up pulling it off, having a great Giro, particularly considering the race program he did prior.
“And then this year it just hasn’t worked out with this crash. We’re just going to have to reset our goals now.”
So what does he put the crashes down to?
“It is bad luck,” he said, ruling out any other reason. “The crash he had in UAE, actually it was a crash in front of him and he stopped and clipped out. And then someone ran up into him from behind. It is just bad luck.
“It’s just a shame…enough’s enough, and hopefully he can just focus on being the best rider he can be rather than chasing his tail and coming back from injury.”
White said that Dunbar simply has to wait for things to change.
“I think you can always work on positioning and being more efficient,” he said. “But I just think bad things can spiral and I think good things can spiral as well. And you just grow in confidence.
“You get through a certain amount of races and just things are going in the right direction. And unfortunately, things have…he’s just had some unfortunate incidents and it's gone in the wrong direction.
“You’ve just got to be patient. Be patient and just keep doing what you're doing. And he certainly knows how to come back from little hiccups, and this is just another one. Hopefully he heals quickly and we can get stuck in and get ready for summer.”
Whether that is Tour or Vuelta, Dunbar’s long overdue some good luck. What he’s achieved thus far with interrupted preparation hints at his natural talent. When he finally gets a consistent run at things, he will reap the rewards of his own persistence and fully deliver on his class.
