By Shane Stokes
Riding his final race prior to the Giro d’Italia, Eddie Dunbar will have the best opportunity yet for a confidence booster when he lines out on Saturday’s penultimate stage of the Tour de Romandie.
The 161 kilometre stage to Thyon 2000 ends with a 21 kilometre climb, the sole summit finish in this year’s race, and will show exactly where Dunbar is at one week out of his second Grand Tour.
He crashed on his first day of racing this season, with a fractured hand putting him out of action for several weeks. Speaking to Sticky Bottle on Friday, his coach Alex Camier said that the signs are promising from the Tour de Romandie.
“Am I happy with his progress? Yes, given the context and the circumstances, Eddie has made good progress across the last few weeks,” he said.
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“He was able to progress well through the Tour of the Basque Country, which was a good sign. Then we did a small block of training together in Monaco. Things are looking positive, generally all in a good direction. The quality of the training was as good as we could hope.”
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Dunbar performed solidly in Friday’s race against the clock, finishing 35th out of 139 riders in the individual time trial at Châtel Saint Denis. Far from a TT specialist, he completed the 18.75 kilometre distance 59 seconds behind the race winner Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates).
A 4.3 kilometre climb did help the lightweight rider, but there was also a flat section of several kilometres beforehand plus a high speed decent to the finish line. His 35th was considerably better than his 70th place in the prologue on Tuesday.
As Camier states, Dunbar has been working hard to get ready for the Giro, and he was prominent on the undulating run into the line on Thursday’s stage two. All going to plan, he will perform strongly on Saturday’s summit finish and secure an important pre-Giro boost to his morale.
As Dunbar told Stickybottle recently, riding for the general classification remains a target in what will be just his second Grand Tour. He will be one of the protected riders on his Jayco AlUla team, and his coach is hopefully he can deliver.
“Of course we haven’t had the smoothest of runs with the injury and everything else, but actually given the context, I am pleased with the condition he has,” he said. “We hope he can progress a bit through Romandie, recover up the other side and then we will see what the Giro holds for us.
“It would be great to give him the exposure to run GC in a three week race and actually get a three week race in the legs. So let’s see how we go. But I’m certainly quite pleased with where we have got to so far.”
