Eddie Dunbar out to put Banteer on the Olympic map again

Dunbar is a climbing specialist and he was selected with that in mind. It’s a 234 km course in Tokyo with 4,800m of climbing but the first 70 km of that is over the flat which will serve to shoehorn the undulating terrain into a 160 km bloc.

EMERGING FROM THE SHADE: Road cyclist Eddie Dunbar comes into the Olympics fresh having sat out the Tour de France and all the carnage that came with it in the first week. Picture: Seb Daly/Sportsfile

Eddie Dunbar was only 10 years old when the statue of the great Pat O’Callaghan was unveiled in their native Banteer.

The commemorative work was erected close to the local sports field and national school in February 2007, which meant there was no escaping the legacy of a double Olympic gold medallist whose story has long since been told and retold to successive generations.