Back racing tomorrow after his crash, Cork's Eddie Dunbar retains high hopes of strong performance in Giro d’Italia despite disruption of fractured hand and missed races (Photo by Bryan Keane-Inpho)
By Shane Stokes
He’s done just one day of racing this year, but it’s characteristic of Eddie Dunbar’s determination and optimism that he remains ambitious about the Giro d’Italia.
Forget his fractured hand, forget the weeks on the sideline and forget the need for a recent operation to heal the damage. It might end up that he’s below par in the Giro, but he doesn’t see it that way now.
“I think if it was a Giro where that first week was incredibly hard, if you could pick out three stages where you’d say, ‘alright, it’s gonna blow to bits here, it’s gonna be decisive,’ it’d be different,” he told stickybottle.
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“But it is a Giro where every week it is getting progressively harder, so you can really build. I’ve only done one Grand Tour, so what do I know, but from looking at it, it is one where a guy might be able to ride into it.
“I think that third week is going to be important. So as long as I can get there in good shape, I think it’ll make a difference. At the moment I am still confident that my expectations can be the same. I’ll try not to use the hand as an excuse.”
This far, Dunbar has only once ridden a three week race. He was third on a stage and 22nd overall in his debut Giro in 2019. Since then he was sidelined from each possible Grand Tour with Team Sky/Ineos Grenadiers, missing out at times due to illness or injury, but also not being given the opportunities his talent deserves.
That frustration is a big part of his reason for moving to Jayco AlUla over the winter. He left his previous team to be a designated leader with the Australian squad, finally getting the support he needed. But he is biding his time for now: while aiming for Grand Tour titles was always a big goal of his, he wants to set a slightly lower target of a top ten finish at the Giro, something which would bode very well for the future.
“I haven’t prepared properly for a Grand Tour, so I don’t know how that goes,” he said. “I have a rough idea, obviously, and I can only guess and think about what it is. But with the way it has gone in the last few months…I don’t know, but it is a solid result over three weeks for anyone who comes out of a Grand Tour with a top ten finish.
“With the amount of time trialling in the Giro, I think that would be realistic. I think that would be a positive result, especially with only having one Grand Tour in my legs. I’ll be going in more or less starting from fresh, so to come out of there with a top ten would be very successful going forward.”
'One of the worst crashes I've ever seen'
Dunbar’s ambition has long been visible, going back to his days as an underage and junior rider. He’d attack early on in races, dragging breaks clear, and often do far more than his fair share of work. That initially led to other riders profiting and outsprinting him at the finish, but as time passed he became stronger and stronger and would instead reach the line alone.
He has retained that same drive during his professional career. If his opportunities were limited as part of Team Sky/Ineos Grenadiers, where he had to ride for others, he is determined to make up for lost time as part of Jayco AlUla.
Thanks to stage race victories last season in the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali and Tour de Hongrie, the Australian squad has named him as one of its protected riders. Dunbar thrived in turn on that show of faith and he was in fine condition heading towards his first race of the year, the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana.
“Training had gone super well,” he confirmed. “Obviously you can only go off training and how you’re doing there. But for me I was good, I went into it in good shape. There was no pressure or anything to actually perform in that race, I was down to do UAE and Tirreno, two WorldTour races, and they were the races I really wanted to be pinging for. Valencia was just a step to get to them races. But, still, in my own head I went there to be competitive and to see where I was at.”
The opening stage of the race was on February 1st and took the riders over two categorised climbs to Altea. Dunbar felt very strong but crashed approximately 20 to 30 kilometres before the Col de Rates. He told Stickybottle how it happened.
“We had our feed guys there, before the run in to the Col de Rates, about 20 or 30km away, on that big main road. I went across to get a feed bag. The bag went to the wrong place, it went into my handlebars. I lost control of the bike, and went off the road down this ravine.
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“It was funny…I got back into the bunch and there’s a couple of guys saying ‘f**k, that was one of the worst crashes I’ve ever seen.’ It was kind of like slow motion, the way it happened. I nearly got the bike upright but the weight of the bag just took the bars away. I hit my head off one of those road barriers and then I slid underneath it and went down.
“A lot of them said that they expected me to come back with a broken nose and a few missing teeth, but thankfully it wasn’t that bad. Even in terms of road rash it wasn’t too bad, so I was I was lucky enough.”
However he knew right away that something wasn’t right. “The pain my hand was bad,” he elaborated. “I have broken bones in the past and know what it feels like. A bone is a bone at the end of the day, no matter where you break it. I finished the stage, but I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t get out of the saddle whatsoever. I had no power in my left hand, just pain. It was like a shock going up through my hand.”
Despite the injury, Dunbar finished as part of a select group of 60-odd riders at the finish. Initial examinations saw the team rule out a fracture to his hand, but pain caused him to withdraw prior to the start of stage two. He underwent further tests and he was subsequently diagnosed with a broken hamate bone.
Cue several weeks on the sidelines and an end to his early spring campaign.
Resetting, rebuilding
Dunbar took a couple of days to process the disappointment and then knuckled down again. He has had multiple setbacks during his career and knows by now that you just have to get on with things. “When you’re inside and you have an injury, it is good to keep in a routine because mentally it’s very easy to fall into a hole, feel sorry for yourself, get down about the injury and start thinking negatively,” he explained. “Over the years I have learned how to deal with that.”
He has separately detailed his six weeks of indoor training sessions to stickybottle, doing two sessions a day six days a week and running on his rest day. He also used an altitude tent at times to further supplement his training routine.
Had things worked out as originally hoped, Dunbar would have been back training on the road much sooner than he was. He tried doing so after four weeks but said his pain levels out on the bike were the same as on the day he crashed. Further examination showed that the fracture hadn’t healed and so he underwent surgery on March 8th to have the snapped hook of hamate removed. The surgeon also filed down a sharp birr on the remainder of the bone.
“Surgery was the best way to have any chance of doing the Giro, really,” he explained. “If I didn’t see the hand specialist, then I would have got another x-ray in two weeks, and it was going to be the exact same. It would have been [a case of] tearing up this first part of the season and having a look at the second part, which would have been fairly disappointing. But hopefully now with this surgery there’s a high chance that I can get to Italy in May.”
He added another benefit to having the portion of bone removed, albeit something which was said very tongue in cheek. “I am a bit lighter,” he laughed.
What’s encouraging is that Dunbar feels that all the work he did on the indoor trainer has paid off. He described himself as ‘very fit,’ when he returned to training on the road and has continued to build since then.
Dunbar will resume competition in the six-day Itzulia Basque Country stage race, which begins next Monday. As a rider whose fitness responds very well to competition, he’s also looking at doing another race prior to the Giro. The Tour de Romandie begins on April 25th and runs for just under a week.
“That ends six days before the Giro. Obviously most guys wouldn’t do it, but I’d be quite happy to do that with the racing I’ve missed,” he said. “And I react very well to racing anyway, so I don’t think it’ll be a bad idea. I think it’ll be fine to do that.
“Training has gone well and I’m feeling good. Racing is the main thing I need now.”
If everything works out in the coming weeks, he’ll start the Giro d’Italia in strong form and keep building as the race progresses. As he mentioned above, the race gets gradually harder and being in very strong condition in the final week will be crucial.
A top ten result is the stated goal and, after that, he’ll have plenty of time to recover and build form prior to lining out in the Vuelta a España on August 26th. With luck, riding a Grand Tour in May will see him in superb condition later this summer.
The bigger picture though is 2024, and beyond.
“It was always the case to try to get two Grand Tours in this year,” he explained. “The plan is to go into the Giro and see how that goes. I think getting the Vuelta in the legs as well would really bring me up a level for the year after, which would be important too.”
