Eddie Dunbar was optimistic his Tour de France campaign would be a success. But the ambitions were quickly shattered during seventh stage with finish on Mur de Bretagne. Dunbar made it into a select group of top GC riders and stage favourites, but a sudden crash took him not only chances at GC result, but also whole race. It was such a strange moment, the Irishman had to watch back to understand what had gone wrong.”I don’t usually watch the crashes afterward, but this time I had to because I couldn’t get them out of my head,” he admits in an interview with Marca. “I remember thinking at that moment, ‘Everything feels dangerous all the time.’ There were only 25 riders in the group, but the nervousness was noticeable.”
“Of course, it’s important to be well positioned there, but with so few people, I didn’t think there would be so much stress, especially on such a wide road,” he said. “In the video, you can see that at one point I even backed off and gave myself some space, because I already thought something could happen. And 200 meters later, I was on the ground.”
The Irishman is still unclear about what exactly caused the crash: “I’m not sure what happened. Some people mentioned a puncture. The bike went in a strange direction, catching me off guard. I may have braked incorrectly or the heat had a role to play, as it was around 35 degrees. It was unfortunate,” he concludes.
It was immediately clear the race was over for Dunbar who had a sharp wrist pain: “I felt a lot of pain. I hurt my hand and the next day I couldn’t even hold the handlebars. But it is what it is. Now I just hope I can finish the season well.”
Not all is lost though. After the Norwegian stage race, Dunbar aims for Vuelta a Espana where he has two stage wins to defend from last year. And had he not lost a lot of time in the first week, who knows what was possible in GC. “The heat hit me hard in Granada. This year, with the northern climate, it will be much better for me,” Dunbar sounds optimistic.