EDDIE DUNBAR

WHO IS EDDIE DUNBAR?

Eddie Dunbar is the Irish climber who turned a near-career-ending sequence of injuries and team transitions into two Vuelta stage wins in 2024 and a 2026 move to Q36.5 alongside Tom Pidcock. From Aqua Blue Sport to Team Sky to INEOS to Jayco-AlUla and now Q36.5, his career has been the modern WorldTour journeyman story — and his honesty about how close he came to being out of the sport makes him a rare voice on what genuine resilience looks like at the top end. For the Irish audience and the broader masters base, he is a credible model for staying in the fight when the data says you should not.

KEY IDEAS

The major positions Dunbar is known for in cycling and endurance sport.

• →Climbing form is built on consistent base years, not single training blocks — the riders who hold WorldTour climbing legs are the ones who never lost their base.
• →Team fit matters more than team prestige — being a domestique at INEOS taught Dunbar what he could not do, but a leadership role at Q36.5 will reveal what he can.
• →Stage racing is a recovery game — the Vuelta wins came after he stopped chasing every breakaway and started managing the three-week load.
• →Injuries do not have to end careers — the rebuild model is to come back as a slightly different rider, not the same one.
• →Irish cycling now has a structural pathway — coaches, junior racing, sponsors — that was missing in the post-Roche decades. Dunbar is part of that proof.