Isaac del Toro said he had no regrets over losing the Giro d’Italia’s pink jersey on the penultimate stage on Saturday, with the young UAE Team Emirates rider happy to have shown that he can compete with the elite in the future.
Del Toro emerged as the surprise overall leader on stage nine when he took the pink jersey and kept it for 10 more stages before Simon Yates snatched it from him on the final mountain stage.
Yates launched a stunning attack on the Colle delle Finestre climb to leave Del Toro and fellow GC contender Richard Carapaz far behind, taking the pink jersey to lead by nearly four minutes heading into Sunday’s final flat stage in Rome.
“Obviously I am super happy to finish second, I need to be mature with this and, of course, a lot of people are surprised that I can be at this level now,” said Del Toro, who was back in his team’s white jersey.
“For my team, it’s not a big surprise, it’s just a question of time. I want to believe it, this is the main problem for me personally, but this week I show I can be a top rider and top contender and I cannot be more proud and happy, to be honest.
“For sure it’s always disappointing to lose the leader’s jersey, but actually as a team we cannot be more together and more happy about the performance that we did. We cannot manage a victory, but… it’s cycling and that’s why we love it.”
Del Toro led Yates by more than a minute ahead of Saturday’s stage. Yet the inexperienced Mexican did not go after Yates when the Briton launched his fourth attack that eventually gave him the overall lead.
Del Toro had been glued to Carapaz’s wheel but even the Ecuadorian rider showed no intent to chase down Yates.
“You don’t want to just start attacking because it’s a one-hour climb and when Simon comes, I knew he will just wait for the best moment to start to attack,” Del Toro added.
“Of course, if I’m first and Simon is third, Richard needs to follow. And then he didn’t want to follow, he just wanted to maybe try to drop me during the whole climb. But then of course he can’t.
“I tried to work with him in the last part of the climb because the gap that Simon has, it almost affects my GC (lead) and he didn’t want to… We waited for the team and we managed the best that we can.”
