Ireland’s Eddie Dunbar has finished fifth in Sunday’s 15th stage of the Vuelta a España.
The Corkman, racing for Team Jayco AlUla, was involved in the sprint the line after the 167.8km stage from Vegadeo to Monforte de Lemos in northwest Spain.
Lidl-Trek’s Mads Pedersen crossed first to take the stage win, seeing Orluis Aular (Movistar) and Marco Frigo (Israel Premier Tech) to second and third.
Dunbar is now 25th in the general classification.
RM Block
Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard retained the red jersey for the overall lead heading into the second rest day of the race with six stages remaining.
The Visma-Lease a Bike rider didn’t attempt a challenge on the leaders, instead opting to remain in the peloton with his GC rivals João Almeida and Tom Pidcock, finishing 13 minutes and 31 seconds behind Pedersen.
Almeida remains second in the GC, 48 seconds behind Vingegaard, while Pidcock stays third, two minutes and 38 seconds back on the Dane.
A 16.5km category-one climb to Puerto de la Garganta tested the riders early in Sunday’s stage, as Jakub Otruba made an early attack but was overtaken at the summit by Jay Vine. Two chasing groups that had broken from the peloton soon caught Vine and Otruba, forming a pack of over 40 riders at the front as the peloton trailed by over three minutes.
Vine and Louis Vervaeke soon attacked to become the new leading duo while the peloton fell nine minutes and 40 seconds behind going into the last 100km with no reaction from the GC leaders.
Lidl-Trek’s Julien Bernard and Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier led a chasing group along with Javier Romo, reducing their gap with the leaders to around two minutes and 20 seconds as they neared the final 50km of the stage.
Romo suffered a crash moments after a man with a Palestinian flag tried to run up to the riders and a policeman ran across the road towards the spectator. Romo got back up and returned to the chasing group within five minutes.
Pedersen joined an attack from the chasing group going into the last 30km, as seven riders broke away to chase down the leaders, who were 40 seconds ahead. The breakaway riders caught Vine and Vervaeke in the last seven kilometres.
Vine tried to attack again in the last kilometre but failed as Pedersen was the first to the finish line, going 98 points ahead of Vingegaard in the race for the green sprinters jersey.
