Eddie Dunbar will lead Team Jayco AlUla's general classification challenge into his first race of the year, AlUla Tour in Saudi Arabia, which gets underway on Tuesday for four stages of action.
Though some of the early season clashes often offer tune-up chances for the climbers ahead of more important goals, that is not the case for Dunbar this time around.
His team's sponsor is the race's main backer, meaning Dunbar and team sprinter Dylan Groenewegen will be out to take big results. And with an extra climbers' stage added this year, making for two days in the hills, Dunbar has a great chance of getting his season off to a bang.
He says he has trained very well during the winter and had studied the route well, pointing out there were not only repeated climbs on the course, but ones that were so steep they were "horrible", which is good news for the two-time Vuelta stage winner.
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“I’m looking forward to the whole experience of racing the AlUla Tour," he said. "There’s a good few guys on the team who have been for last few years and from chatting to them, it’s sounds like a really good trip. And it’s a good race as well. So I’m really looking forward to it looking forward to it.
"It’s a cool place to go racing, in the desert, it’s definitely an experience and obviously I’ve never been to Saudi Arabia either, so it’s going to be nice to experience a new country as well. Obviously AlUla is one of our main sponsors and that’s where we race, so it’s going to be cool to have a look around there as well.
"There’s a new GC day this year, so I’m happy about that and I’ve been training well so hopefully I can go there and put in a good performance and see what happens.
"From the guys who have raced it, they all say the climb on stage four is a horrible climb and it’s incredibly steep, it’s short, but very steep. But as I said, stage two is a tough stage as well, it’s a new stage this year so I’m really looking forward to that day.”
