‘You kind of wonder when it stops’ – Eddie Dunbar picks himself up and goes again at the Vuelta

The Irishman joined Pinarello-Q36.5 from Jayco-AlUla last winter, but his debut season with the team was ruined by a most unfortunate crash near his home in Monaco in March. He was out on his city bike in the principality when he was struck by a motorcyclist, sustaining a broken ankle in the incident.

Dunbar has been through the ringer over the years with crashes. His final season in the under-23 ranks in 2017 was capped by victory at the Tour of Flanders but marred by concussion after a heavy fall at the Baby Giro.

His time at Ineos was also beset by crashes, while broken bones saw delayed starts to his first two seasons at Jayco, though he still managed to place seventh on the 2023 Giro d’Italia and win two stages on the 2024 Vuelta a España.

Dunbar’s long-awaited Tour de France debut in 2025 was ended prematurely by a crash on stage 7, and then the freak incident in March interrupted his Pinarello reboot before it had really begun. The Banteer native knows more than most about picking himself back up again, but this latest comeback might have been the toughest yet. 

“It’s probably been a bit harder, if anything,” Dunbar told Domestique. “I’ve been down a few times and I’ve come back, but this took its time. Well, the injury took its time to heal anyway, and that was a very difficult period. You just kind of wonder when it stops sometimes…

“It took me a while to get back into it and I suffered mentally quite a bit, I’m not going to lie about that. But look, I’m here now and I have an opportunity to hopefully go for a stage win.”

Cruelly, Dunbar’s broken ankle came not long after another crash had forced him out of Paris-Nice, and it also disrupted all his goals for 2026. Pinarello’s initial plan for Dunbar was to deploy him in a leadership role at the Giro before bringing him to the Tour in support of Tom Pidcock. Instead, he spent the spring and early summer entirely unsure about when he would make it back to the peloton.

“Originally, we thought it would only be a couple of weeks,” Dunbar said. “But then I went to see an ankle specialist in Kilkenny, and it was pretty clear that the recovery time was going to be anywhere between three to six months.”

In the worst-case scenario, that would essentially have ended the Corkman’s season, but remarkably, he was back in action at the Sibiu Tour in July. After taking 15th overall there, he faced a deeper peloton at the Vuelta a Burgos, thrashing his way into shape ahead of the Vuelta. 

“Just getting back in Romania when I did was very positive, because I was in a boot for almost two months,” Dunbar said. “I could walk in the boot, but it wasn’t really recommended and while you can go into the gym and stuff like that, there’s nothing you can do that’s going to help a cyclist. It’s not like I could do leg weights or anything like that, so we just had to wait until the bone healed. The first few weeks were slow but then it picked up. 

“I got a good kicking in Burgos there a few weeks ago, but then I went home, recovered a bit, went up to altitude and now we’re here.”

Dunbar was among the attackers on the Port d’Envalira on stage 4 of the Vuelta before Tadej Pogacar’s inevitable onslaught, and he was up the road in the break of the day on stage 7 to Valdelinares. By pedigree, he was among the best climbers in the group, but his lack of racing consigned him to eighth place. He was on the attack again on stages 12 and 13, and he will seek out further opportunities before the race reaches Granada.

“When you join a new team, you want to show yourself and do well,” Dunbar said. “I just didn’t get the opportunity to do that at the start of the year, and the middle of the season was the same. But now I’m hoping to finish the season strong. It’s important to get the three weeks in the legs, even looking forward to next year – but I’m confident I can build some sort of condition in the race.”