Eddie Dunbar takes the final stage in the lashing rain and wearing the yellow jersey in Wales; the overall winner by five minutes (Photo: Guy Swarbrick)
By Gerard Cromwell
Cork teenager Eddie Dunbar has claimed overall victory at the NFTO Junior Tour of Wales today.
Dunbar, riding for the Munster Sensa team, took over the lead of the race when he won stage 2 on Saturday.
Having held onto his yellow jersey on yesterday’s third and fourth stages, Dunbar simply stamped his authority on the race with a second stage win today.
He allowed a four man leading group build up a lead of over a minute early on today and did not panic when the lead quartet were joined by three chasers to make seven up front midway through the stage.
Advertisement
Instead, the Kanturk youngster cannily waited until the summit finish up the infamous Tumble Mountain before launching an attack at the bottom that saw him ride across and then past the leaders to take stage and overall glory at the top.
The yellow-jerseyed Dunbar was ever attentive at the head of the field when moves went clear and when he attacked himself, he was by far the strongest in the race (Photo: Guy Swarbrick)
Related News
The flying Irishman ended the stage 41 seconds ahead of Stephen Williams of the Welsh team, with the rest of the field well scattered back the road.
Dunbar's team mate Dylan O'Brien also put in a great ride to take 8th on what was a very tough stage. Another Munster Sensa man, Stephen Shanahan was 15th while Dara O'Mahoney was 37th.
Dunbar rounded out the winner by a whopping 4:51 from Alexander Braybrooke (VeloCity WD-40), with O'Brien 6th, Shanahan 28th and O'Mahoney 51st.
Having become the first rider ever to win a second consecutive Junior Tour of Ireland earlier in the year and then gone on to claim the national road race title, Dunbar simply blitzed the best of British this weekend to claim outright victory in Wales.
Dunbar in yellow during yesterday's stage 3. He did most if his damage on Saturday afternoon's road stage and on today's final leg.
He won the opening road stage by three minutes on Saturday, after getting clear in a three-man move and dropping his fellow escapees when the road went up.
That victory, his first wearing the jersey of national junior champion since winning the title last weekend, secured for him the yellow jersey.
And with no major splits on stages 3 and 4 yesterday, Dunbar today effectively repeated the kind of performance that swatted away the rest of the field on Saturday.
The second year junior has been in stunning form this season. And having ridden the World Championships and European Championships last year, and the Europeans for a second time this year, he goes to the Worlds in Spain next month with hopes high of a great result in the junior men’s road race.
Topics
