Eddie Dunbar (Team Jayco AlUla) is honing his form at AlUla Tour at present, taking 5th on today's hilly stage and 4th on the first climbing stage, showing decent early season shape despite normally taking some time to warm-up.
The Irishman said he trained hard in the build up to the event, though race leader and two-time stage winner, Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling), has been in control on the climbs.
Dunbar said he will move on from the race in Saudi Arabia, which concludes tomorrow, and then target the general classification in World Tour races in Italy and Spain.
His two next targets are Tirreno-Adriatico from March 10th and Itzulia Basque Country from April 7th.
"They're two big World Tour races so it would be nice to go there and perform. I'll ride GC there and then get ready for the Tour de France," he said.
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"It's the only Grand Tour I haven't done, a great opportunity this year to go there. And we've a great team leader with Ben (O'Connor) this year joining the team.
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"So I'm going in to help him get a good result on GC and maybe go for a stage win myself at some point."
Asked how excited he was to be aiming for the Tour this year for the first time in his career, Dunbar said it was "incredible".
"That's what every cyclist beginning… they kinda dream of racing the Tour. I've probably been waiting a while for that opportunity to come around, I thought I'd have it done a lot sooner in my career. But I'm really excited.
"If that doesn't motivate you, I don't know what will. I'm really looking forward to it and just hopefully it will be… I'm sure it will be, a good experience, you hear stories about what the Tour is like. But I'm really looking forward to it."
Today, on stage 4 of AlUla Tour, Dunbar finished in a four-man chasing group just behind leader and stage winner Pidcock.
Though the Irishman looked like he lacked a little on the final climb, he then led the charge after Pidcock in a bid to ensure his team mate Alan Hatherly, who is 3rd overall, took the time bonus in the sprint for 2nd place.
"We expected crazy high power and I think Tom (Pidcock) had that, that was obvious," Dunbar said. "I kinda settled into a rhythm and recovered a little bit in that middle bit (of the climb) and came back to Alan. And 2nd was the best we could do today."
