Eddie Dunbar puts in his strongest climbing display of Vuelta | Video

Eddie Dunbar finishes with last year's overall winner, Sepp Kuss, on the big summit finish at Vuelta stage 19 today (Photo: Rafa Gomez-SCA-Cor Vos)

Eddie Dunbar (Team Jayco AlUla) has put in his best climbing display at La Vuelta 2024 on today's penultimate summit finish to Alto de Moncalvillo, taking 7th on the stage.

After leading the race for 13 days, Ben O'Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) finally lost the red jersey to Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) after the Slovenia took off on the last mountain to win the stage in emphatic style.

Behind him, a small chasing group of the strongest riders in the race formed, with Ireland's Dunbar among that clutch of riders. He more than held his own today and also distanced riders like O'Connor and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), with some of the Irishman's rivals for the top 10 were much further back the road.

However, though UAE Team Emirates riders Pavel Sivakov and Adam Yates - who are both ahead of Dunbar overall - ceded time to the Irish rider today, they retained their positions overall. Sivakov lost 1:14 to Dunbar and Yates 1:58.

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However, though Dunbar is now much closer to them in the overall standings, he remains in 13th overall and is a significant 5:52 off Sivakov in 10th, which appears to be too much to close barring an implosion by the French rider on the summit finish of Picón Blanco tomorrow.

Still, the fact Dunbar is remaining strong deep into the third week is a very positive sign, especially as he has suffered several crashes this season and last, which has interrupted his progress.

Roglič was in sensational form today, taking the stage victory - his third of the race and 15th of his career - and is surely now set for a fourth general classification victory at La Vuelta (Photo: Unipublic-SCA)

At the front today, Roglič pounced on the final climb with almost 5km to go, being dragged clear by team mates  Daní Martinez and Aleksandr Vlasov and then going for it himself.

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Though Enric Mas (Movistar) eventually put together a decent pursuit, and Carapaz did the same, both faded on the upper slopes of the climb and could not gain enough time on O'Connor to leapfrog him in the overall.

Roglič, who was in sensational form today, claimed the stage victory by 46 seconds from David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), with Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) 3rd in the same time and Mas 4th a further four seconds back.

Dunbar was 7th at 1:01 while O'Connor placed 12th at 1:49, and now slips to 2nd overall some 1:54 down on Roglič. Mas is 3rd at 2:20 and Carapaz is 4th at 2:54.

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