Eddie Dunbar (Team Jayco AlUla) has two stage wins at La Vuelta and 7th overall at the Giro d'Italia in his palmares and now his team has floated the idea of the Irishman stepping up to the Tour de France next season.
It is the debut that Irish cycling fans wanted to see, especially after Dunbar rode away from the select group on stage 20 of La Vuelta and so impressively claimed the stage victory, his second of the race, on the slopes of Picón Blanco.
The one downside of riding the Tour is that Dunbar would not return to the Giro d'Italia - certainly not to ride general classification. Team Jayco AlUla boss Matt White has now indicated Chris Harper will be the likely leader there, as Ben O'Connor comes into the team next year and Dunbar has also made his case for Tour selection.
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Speaking in an interview for the Daniel Benson's Cycling Substack, White said O'Connor - who is joining the team from Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale - would prioritise the Tour de France next season, though he may also ride La Vuelta.
And the Australian rider will be team leader at the Tour, especially given the season he has just had, with 2nd overall and a stage win at La Vuelta, which he led for 13 days, as well as silver in the road race at the Worlds.
White, the team's director of high performance and racing, told Benson in an interview at the London Three Day that the challenge for the team and O'Connor was now to "keep the ball rolling". In outlining how that might be done, White suggested Dunbar was squarely in contention for a Tour start.
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“He’ll build back from the Tour de France, and that race will be the number one target for the summer,” White said. “There will probably be a fairly traditional build-up from February and the rest of the spring, and then he’ll have a rest and build-up for the Tour. And then we might even see him backing up at the Vuelta at the end of the season.
“Ben has had an incredible year and was one of the most consistent riders on the planet when you look at his season breakdown… In almost every race he did, he was on the podium. It’s an exciting time for us and the first time we’ve had an Australian GC leader. We’ve had Aussie winners with Simon Gerrans, Caleb Ewan and Michael Matthews, but no GC leader."
White added while the team must wait to see all of the details of the Giro d'Italia route, he was thinking of Chris Harper to lead the general classification challenge there.
The team would go to the Tour with a GC leader and a sprinter - which would mean Ewan or Dylan Groenewegen - with others clearly in strong contention to make the line-up.
“We’ll run the same model that we’ve had in the past in that we’ll be taking a sprinter to the Tour and Ben. That’s the template we’ve had with Simon Yates and Dylan Groenewegen," he confirmed.
"We’ve got a few other guys putting their hand up for the Tour, like Eddie Dunbar, and Mauro Schmid, so we’ve got a good group."
