There is an expression that Eddie Dunbar has repeated almost like a mantra ever since he moved from Ineos to Jayco Alura at the beginning of last season. He was right.

At the end of the toughest stage of the Vuelta a España, 5km from the summit of the Picon Blanco, Dunbar attacked with purpose from the red jersey group on a gradient that at times exceeded 18%. First he caught and passed former teammate Pavel Sivakov, then resisted the relentless pursuit of David Gaudou (Groupama-FDJ), but he knew the day's leading riders had not yet moved.

As he bounced back and forth between 12 and 15 seconds during the last 2 km, Dunbar kept looking over his shoulder at the riders chasing him on the hillside. Every time he looked back, a different grande seemed to be leading the pack: from Enric Mas (Movistar), to Richard Kalapas (EF Education Easy Post), and at one point even Primosz Roglic.

Mikel Landa (TRex-Quickstep) made a sudden surge from the back of the fractured chase group and closed in on the pack in the last kilometer, but Dunbar never flinched. He crossed the finish line seven seconds ahead of the mass, now his second win of the Vuelta and the most impressive of his career. [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] 0]

Dunbar pondered the approach to the final climb to the Picon Blanco. The climb came at the end of a day marked by 5,000 meters of total climbing and the travails of the ailing and weakened Logrich-led Red Bull-Bohra-Hansgrohe guardian angel. He resisted the temptation to follow Sivakov's move on the final climb of Los Tornos because his delay on GC (he is now 11th at 13:15) might give him a chance to break away from the red jersey pack on the final leg to the finish.

“I thought I had a little bit of leeway because I was 12 minutes behind on GC,” he said. I knew it was going to be a really difficult stage today and I knew a lot of the guys would be tired, especially the GC guys who have been riding to their limits every day. I didn't stay in the break, but I believed I could win today.”

Dunbar, who took his first win in Galicia last week, confessed that after his crash at the Giro in May, he still wondered if cycling had a future. It would be easy to say this Vuelta was a turning point on Saturday atop the Picon Blanco, but Dunbar politely denied it. The terrible beauty of cycling is that it's never neat like that. [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]