Eddie Dunbar targeting Grand Tour podium after Giro d'Italia success

Eddie Dunbar is targeting a podium finish in a Grand Tour event after his stunning seventh place finish at the Giro d'Italia.

It was only his second Grand Tour event and came some four years after his first, a 22nd place finish at the 2019 Giro whilst riding in support of Pavel Sivakov for the INEOS Grenadiers team.

Now riding with Team Jayco–AlUla, the Cork man produced the best Irish finish in the event since Stephen Roche triumphed in the 1987 event.

Dunbar's performance has catapulted him into the cycling limelight, and the 26-year-old is hoping to build on the positivity with a top three finish in the near future with a general classification ride at the Vuelta a España in August his next ambition.

"I’ll try and get on the podium first," was his response to RTÉ Sport’s Clare MacNamara when asked about a possible Grand Tour win in the future.

"There’s a lot we can improve on for me and the team. If we can just dial in those fine details and look at how to get better then, yeah, were not going to be too far off I don’t think.

"The main thing I took away from these three weeks, at least I don’t have to wait another four years to do my next one.

"There’s one lined up already in August in terms of Vuelta.

"I think, yeah, the amount I learned over the last three weeks in terms of preparation, how I dealt with myself and how the team raced, how I reacted to the leader, all of that was really positive.

"I’d be worried if I was talking here thinking that was it, that was my best, for sure I think we can get better when we sit back and analyse it a bit.

"[Take] everything we learned in the last three weeks and test it out again in August and see where we end up."

Thoughts of attacking the front in Italy and Spain in the summer seemed