Isaac del Toro looks back on decisive Giro moment: 'They should have told me about Van Aert'
He had been in pink for almost two weeks, climbing beyond the favourites and outsmarting riders twice his age. Then, on the gravel slopes of the Colle delle Finestre, it all slipped away. In a recent conversation with GCN en Español, Isaac del Toro recalled the silence on the radio that turned a dream Giro into a hard lesson.
The 21-year-old started the stage to Sestriere in the Maglia Rosa, 43 seconds ahead of Richard Carapaz and 1:21 up on Simon Yates.
Del Toro's lead went back to the Tuscan gravel stage on day 9, when he fought Wout van Aert for victory in Siena and pulled on pink for the first time. “That whole day was about not making mistakes,” he said in the interview with GCN en Español. “They told me I’d have the chance to fight for it, and if I get that chance, I go for it.”
That instinct carried him deep into the final week, where he won again on stage 17 and reached the Finestre still ahead. But as soon as EF Education-EasyPost blew the race apart, things began to unravel.
“I didn’t follow straight away,” Del Toro said. “The Finestre is an hour-long climb, and that effort from EF made no sense. Only when Brandon McNulty and Rafal Majka were gone did I bridge across.”
He caught Carapaz, and moments later Yates arrived. The three rode together until the Briton attacked, first alone and then with help from Van Aert, who had been up the road. It was the move that decided the Giro.
“Carapaz had shown the best legs, so on the radio they told me to watch him,” Del Toro said. “I think I’d do it differently now, but I made mistakes, some of them from inexperience.”
The one that still stings didn’t come from his legs, but from the car. “When the radio told me Yates was up the road, and that Van Aert was too, Simon already had 55 seconds,” he recalled. “That shocked me. They should’ve told me about Van Aert when he had ten seconds, then I’d have said: let’s attack, let’s try.”
By the time he realised what was happening, Yates and Van Aert were gone. The gap that once protected him became a four-minute deficit by the finish in Sestriere. “I think from the car they didn’t want me to go over the limit and risk finishing fifth or sixth,” Del Toro said. “In the end we only lost one place, but the small mistakes cost us dearly. I made a tactical error, I forgot the details, like Van Aert.”
Even so, there’s no trace of bitterness. “When Simon came back, I knew I’d lose the Giro,” he said. “They both wanted to attack, and with their weight and altitude strengths they had the advantage. I’m proud of my Giro, but not of finishing second. I could have won, and that’s made me stronger for the future.”
That strength carried through to the end of the season. Last weekend, Del Toro sealed both the Mexican time trial and road race titles on home soil in Ensenada. The two wins closed a breakout year that saw him collect 18 victories in total, making him one of UAE Emirates-XRG’s most successful riders in a record-breaking campaign.
