Eddie Dunbar (Jayco-AlUla) took a second stage win at this year’s Vuelta a España, as a late attack on stage 20 was enough to hold off the group of GC favourites.

The Irishman powered away from a depleted peloton on the upper slopes of the Picón Blanco climb, the final summit finish of the Vuelta and the end of a viciously hard queen stage.

A ten-man group eventually got clear. King of the mountains Marc Soler and Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates), Harold Tejada (Astana-Qazastan), Marco Frigo (Israel-Premier Tech), Clément Berthet (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale), Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious), Sylvain Moniquet (Lotto-Dstny), Carlos Canal (Movistar), Enzo Leijnse (dsm-firmenich-PostNL), Thomas Champion (Cofidis), and double stage winner Pablo Castrillo (Equipo Kern Pharma) were allowed a roughly six-minute gap in the early stages of the race.

One of the more intriguing subplots of this edition of the Vuelta has been the inter-UAE Team Emirates battle for the polka-dot jersey, and on the first two categorised climbs it was Vine who took the points to leapfrog team-mate Soler in the classification’s standings. As the climbs got tougher the plot thickened. Soler launched a long-range attack on the category 2 Alto del Caracol, but Vine and Berthet bridged across before the summit, where the Australian took the KOM points.

Back in the bunch disaster struck for race leader Roglič as domestique Aleksandr Vlasov was distanced early. In an ever bigger blow Dani Martinez abandoned the race, followed a while later by Nico Denz amid rumours of sickness in the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe camp. The other general classification teams smelled blood as Mikel Landa – who had suffered earlier in the week and dropped to ninth overall – put his team-mates on the front.

Soler was caught by his former breakaway companions on the 30km descent after the category 2 Portillo de la Sia, with him and Vine tied-first on 71 mountains points going into the final double-header of first-category climbs. The Spaniard then cracked on the lower slopes of the 11km Puerto de Los Tornos and Vine appeared to target the stage win – although the chances of the break hanging on looked vanishingly slim.

His team-mate Pavel Sivakov – who had attacked further down the climb – and Enric Mas were the main beneficiaries of bonus seconds at the summit, and Sivakov entered the final 20km with a minute’s advantage over the depleted peloton. Rather than a full-on descent, a short downhill and stretch of flat separated the Puerto de Los Tornos from the Picón Blanco, giving the riders little time to recover before the most demanding climb of all.

Eddie Dunbar took advantage of the stalemate to attack and tagged Sivakov with a little over 3km to go. Inside the final 3km he surged past the Frenchman and the sustained effort began to take its toll on the red jersey group, with Carapaz and O’Connor among those unable to hold the wheel. Alone, Dunbar powered into the clouds, nearly 1500m above sea level and with just 13 seconds’ advantage in the final kilometre.

1. Eddie Dunbar (Irl) Jayco-AlUla, in 04:38:37
2. Enric Mas (Spa) Movistar, +7s
3. Primož Roglič (Slo) Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, +10s
4. Richard Carapaz (Ecu) EF Education-EasyPost, +12s
5. Urko Berrade (Spa) Equipo Kern Pharma, +14s
6. Ben O’Connor (Aus) Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, same time
7. David Gaudu (Fra) Groupama-FDJ, +21s
8. Mikel Landa (Spa) Soudal Quick-Step, +23s
9. Florian Lipowitz (Ger) Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, +37s
10. Mattias Skjelmose (Den) Lidl-Trek, same time

1. Primož Roglič (Slo) Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, in 81:22:19
2. Ben O’Connor (Aus) Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale, +2:02
3. Enric Mas (Spa) Movistar, +2:11
4. Richard Carapaz (Ecu) EF Education-EasyPost, +3:00
5. David Gaudu (Fra) Groupama-FDJ, +4:48
6. Mattias Skjelmose (Den) Lidl-Trek, +5:18
7. Florian Lipowitz (Ger) Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, +6:26
8. Mikel Landa (Spa) Soudal Quick-Step, +6:57
9. Pavel Sivakov (Fra) UAE-Team Emirates, +8:50
10. Carlos Rodríguez (Spa) Ineos Grenadiers, +10:31

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Eddie Dunbar soars to victory on stage 20 of Vuelta a España

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