Another day, another incremental advantage seized by Isaac Del Toro in the race for the maglia rosa. While Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) was once again astonishing us all with his uphill sprint victory, the pink jersey came home a few seconds behind the claim third place on the stage, and increase his lead by another few precious seconds.
His sprint on the uphill finish in Vicenza was not only enough to seal third place and therefore four bonus seconds, but also open up a gap of three seconds over the rest of his GC rivals. Add to that the two seconds he picked up earlier in the Red Bull Kilometre, and in total, he gained nine seconds over all of his GC rivals — not much in isolation, but at this rate, he’s on course to win the Giro d'Italia by way of a thousand paper cuts.
Slowly but surely, he is pulling away at the top of the general classification. He’s now 1:18 ahead of Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain-Victorious) in third and 1:20 ahead of Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) in fourth, while Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) has drifted further away to 1:35. All the rest of his GC rivals are now over two minutes behind.
All of them, that is, apart from Juan Ayuso — if his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate can be considered a GC rival. Gossip about how well the two riders currently placed first and second on GC are getting on, and how much their GC ambitions might clash, has bubbled away since the Mexican first attacked on the strade bianche during stage nine to take pink, and today attracted yet more speculation. Both riders sprinted against each other for the bonus seconds on offer at the Red Bull Kilometre, with Del Toro eventually sitting up and allowing Ayuso to come past him. Whether or not Del Toro did so to hand his ostensible leader the extra seconds, or simply didn’t have the legs to beat him in the sprint, is up for debate.
Either way, Del Toro leads Ayuso at the top of the GC by 38 seconds, in large part due to all the bonus seconds he has picked up these past two weeks. In total, Del Toro has now accumulated 36 seconds this way, compared to 22 by Ayuso, and barely any from the others; even Primož Roglič, usually so adept at picking them up, only has two seconds. Though the majority of Del Toro’s lead was built via his attack on stage nine, where he finished a minute ahead of his GC rivals, these bonus seconds have solidified his lead.
Will these bonus seconds go on to do more than, and form the foundation for a successful pink jersey bid? The more he picks up, the bigger his lead on GC grows, and the stronger his claim to be UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s leader becomes. And the mere fact that he is able to pick up so many, reliably beating all of the other GC rivals in all of these uphill sprints, is an impressive display of superiority that helps solidify his status as the strongest rider in the race.
However, in the wider context of a Grand Tour, the seconds picked up here and there can be dwarfed by the minutes won and lost in the high mountains. As impressive as he’s been so far, and as big as his lead has grown, we won’t really have a clear picture of Del Toro’s chances until we reach the Alps.
Much has been made of the lack of summit finishes at this year’s Giro, with only one more to come following stage seven’s finish at Tagliacozzo in the Apennines. It has been speculated that the relatively small number of them will make this a less selective Giro than usual, and therefore, time gained in other areas becomes more precious, including that from bonus seconds. But a close look at the final week shows that, even if the stages don’t generally finish atop them, the mountains are still hard and plentiful enough to cause serious damage. Each one of stages 16, 19 and 20 includes more than 4,500m elevation gain, and the mighty Colle delle Finestre towards the end of the latter is alone enough to cause carnage.
We’ve seen in past editions of the Giro how an early pace-setter can look untouchable in the first few weeks, only to collapse in the final week mountains. In fact, it was the very climb of Colle delle Finestre that undid all the great work Simon Yates had done to take a big lead during the 2018 Giro d’Italia. Prior to the final week stage featuring that climb, the Brit had stormed his way to three stage wins and a lead on GC, which only Tom Dumoulin was within 2:30 of. He had looked untouchable on the punchy climbs of the first and second week, but came dramatically undone that day, collapsing completely to tumble out of the top 10 altogether.
Primož Roglič’s collapse in 2019 wasn’t quite so dramatic, but followed a similar pattern. He too raced to a couple of stage wins early on in the Giro, and seemed to be in control of the GC race, but he too drifted away upon reading the big mountains of the final well, only recovering a podium place on the final day time trial having previously looked poised to win it.
Like both Yates and Roglič before him, Del Toro ventures into the second half of this Giro without much Grand Tour experience; even less, in fact, as the others had a fourth and sixth place finish to their name, respectively. As good as he’s looked so far, we don’t know how well his legs will recover into the third week of a Grand Tour, nor how capable he is on the biggest mountains. Worryingly, from his point of view, Del Toro only has two top finishes in WorldTour stage races to his name, the highest being fourth at Tirreno-Adriatico.
He’s a raw talent who appears to have a very high ceiling, but, at the tender age of just 21, he still has lots of unanswered questions to answer. As great as he’s been so far, all these seconds picked up so far might be made moot on any one of the many fearsome mountains to come.
