Eddie Dunbar crashes twice on opening stage of Vuelta a España

Eddie Dunbar had a disappointing start to his Vuelta a España campaign on Saturday, the Irishman one of many on his Jayco AlUla squad who crashed during a washed-out team time trial in Barcelona.

The Australian team was perhaps the most unlucky of the 21 squads, with six of the eight riders coming down in one crash, including Dunbar.

He later slid out on a corner close to the finish while pushing onwards to try to limit the losses. Fortunately he was not badly hurt, with skin abrasions thought to be the extent of his injuries.

Early starters Team DMS Firmenich benefited from better conditions and won the 14.8km test. The Dutch squad was fractions of a second quicker than Spanish team Movistar, with EF Education-EasyPost six seconds back in third.

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The Soudal-QuickStep squad of defending champion Remco Evenepoel was also six seconds behind, while Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard had a puncture and had to change bikes, causing his Jumbo-Visma team to lose 32 seconds.

Dunbar’s squad conceded 51 seconds, a frustrating start to the race.

Meanwhile Archie Ryan added another world-class climbing victory to his career tally on Saturday, winning stage 7b of the Tour de l’Avenir in France. The Wicklow rider was active in an early breakaway and after this was joined by many of the race favourites to form a large front group, he attacked on the final climb of the Col du Mont Cenis, approximately ten kilometres from the finish.

Ryan immediately got a gap and went over the summit over 30 seconds clear, fending off a hard chase by Isaac Del Toro (Mexico) and Giulio Pellizzari (Italy), who had attacked out of the group behind. He rode strongly on the remaining undulating 5.5 kilometres to reach the line seven seconds clear, with the next riders 23 seconds back.

The victory was a highly impressive one, both because the race is unofficially regarded as the under 23 version of the Tour de France, and also because Ryan had been sidelined for almost the entire season due to a knee injury and only did one day of racing before the start of the Tour de l’Avenir.

He had taken seventh and eighth on stages earlier this week but his lack of racing saw him lose a lot of time on Friday.

“It was a really tough race actually, I’ve come into it pretty undercooked,” he said, referring to that lack of competition. “It’s my second race of the year only, my first race was the weekend before this. And not just that, I had a bad crash on stage two. So I’ve been coming back from that.

“It’s all thanks to the amazing staff in Cycling Ireland, and the physios for getting me back in one piece and mechanics for fixing my bike.”

Ryan made a point of naming and thanking the other riders on the Irish squad. “Kevin Cambridge, my team-mate, has been a super domestique this whole race. He’s unreal. He got me back in somewhat after the crash and the next few days he’s been on the front, putting me into pole position on the climb.

“My other team-mates Oran Doogan and Jamie Meehan, Paddy O’Loughlin, Dean Harvey, they gave me bottles the whole race and it’s all thanks to them. They are just amazing.”

Ryan’s win came after a deliberate decision to hold back in Saturday morning’s hill climb time trial, saving his energy for the afternoon stage. McCambridge went deep, though, finishing a strong 14th.

Ryan’s stage victory follows on from wins last year on stages of the Ronde de l’Isard and the Tour of Slovakia, as well as top eight overall finished in both of those races. He was also fourth overall in the Tour de l’Avenir. Those results secured him a recently-announced professional contract with the EF Education-EasyPost squad, starting next season.

The Tour de l’Avenir concludes with another mountain stage on Sunday.