Sometimes, the cards won’t fall your way no matter what. And whenever Jayco-AlUla climber Eddie Dunbar weighs up his chances of success in the last mountain stage of the Vuelta a España on Saturday, the Irishman can’t help believing the odds of repeating 2024’s spectacular last-minute victory at Picón Blanco are severely limited.
Rewind 12 months, and Dunbar had already broken a longstanding drought on top-level success with his first Grand Tour stage win in the second week of the Vuelta. But if his win from a break in Padron in Galicia had much of opportunism in his lengthy last-kilometre sprint for the line on a hilly stage, his victory at Picón Blanco ten days later was a much more textbook high mountains lone charge away from the main pack of GC contenders.
The key difference with 2025 is that at Picón Blanco last year, the 29-year-old points out to Cyclingnews, the overall classification was virtually settled. On this occasion, and despite the early climbs on the stage favouring a mountain specialist like Dunbar when it comes to getting in the break, Dunbar believes the narrow gap between the top GC favourites will render it much harder for any long-distance moves to go the distance.
Neither race leader Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) nor his closest pursuer, João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) is in top climbing form. However, as Dunbar sees it, the opportunity to round off the Vuelta with a stage win is too good for them to want to miss.
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