Eddie Dunbar had the pressure that comes with Team Sky working for him today. But he rode a great race, once again, and put in a strong solo attack in his bid to win the third stage of Tour de la Provence.
Young Irish rider Eddie Dunbar put in a brave bid for victory today on stage 3 of Tour de la Provence (2.1).
On a day when Team Sky was clearly working for him, he made the nine-man select group on the final climb.
And when the attacks began from the escape he put in an impressive surge with 8km to go and got a gap on his own.
He put everything into the move, though was chased hard by Groupama-FDJ which had three riders in the escape.
And while Dunbar was caught and his breakaway swelled in number when a chase group got across, it was a really impressive ride by the 22-year-old.
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Philippe Gilbert (Deceuninck-QuickStep) sprinted in to win the stage from the large front group having been in the initial nine-man escape with Dunbar.
The Irishman was 10th on the day on the same time as the winner. Eddie Dunbar remains 7th overall at 15 seconds.
Gorka Izagirre (Astana) continues to lead Tour de la Provence with a hard final stage to come.
Nicolas Roche (Team Sunweb) finished in 51st place, in a small group 5:11 down, on a day when the race split to pieces.
How the racing unfolded
With 16km remaining, the bunch had whittled down to almost half its original size on the 181km road from Aubagne to Le Castellet.
And the early escape was still about 30 seconds clear, with some of them already deciding to sit up and go back to the peloton.
Dunbar had been ever-present in the top 10 of the bunch and when his team hit the front with 16km to go, he sat third wheel behind two of his team mates.
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The QuickStep and Movistar riders and race leader Gorka Izagirre (Astana), were just behind the Team Sky men as they reached the Le Brulat climb for the final time.
When they hit the climb, Dunbar was down to just one team mate and the last two escapees were now just a couple of hundred metres up the road.
With exactly 12.3km to go, David Gaudu of Groupama-FDJ lit up it, attacking with his team mate Thibaut Pinot, Izagirre and Simon Clarke (EF Education First) in his wheel.
Dunbar and a couple of others were able to follow, with a group of nine now dropping everyone else.
Pinot then took it up on the front of the lead group; the others digging in to follow his surge before Gaudu took over setting the pace once more.
And that’s the way it stayed over the top of the climb, with a number of chase groups not far behind.
With 10km remaining, a chase group of 16, headed by AG2R-La Mondiale, was riding hard in pursuit of the leaders.
Its leader on the race, Tony Gallopin, had been in the breakaway yesterday and took second on the stage but he had missed the boat this time.
And his team mates were clearly keen to get him back up to the leaders, with Groupama-FDJ doing its best up front to keep the gap as big as possible.
As the breakaway began attacking, Dunbar waited for a stall at 8km and jumped the breakaway hard.
He immediately fully committed on his own and was chased all the way by Gaudu, with the rest of the breakaway on the young Frenchman’s wheel.
With 7km remaining, Dunbar had a gap of just a couple of seconds, but he kept riding hard, clearly determined to give it his very best shot.
However, he was soon caught and then Pinot attacked; jumping hard but being marked closely.
The racing then move back on to the Circuit Paul Ricard motor racing circuit. And with 4km remaining the large group just behind caught the escape setting up a final sprint from a group of 23.
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