Isaac del Toro doesn’t yet feel certain of the overall victory in the Giro d’Italia, even though he successfully resisted another attack on his pink jersey on Friday. Simon Yates is critical of Visma-Lease a Bike after a bad day.
Challenger Richard Carapaz tried to break race leader Del Toro twice in a grueling mountain stage, but in both cases, the pink jersey wearer was able to follow. Del Toro even won the sprint for the bonus seconds. “I had the legs to go along,” said the 21-year-old Mexican afterwards.
As a result, Del Toro goes into Saturday’s decisive mountain stage with a lead of 43 seconds over Carapaz, the number two in the general classification. He’s not counting his chickens yet. “I don’t want to be too confident. But I’m glad I was able to maintain.”
Del Toro expects Carapaz to pull out all the stops on Saturday to drop him, for example on the Colle delle Finestre. “Some teams will definitely attack me. We have to stay together and be alert. It would be magical to still be in the lead after the Colle delle Finestre.”
Del Toro can draw hope from the work of his teammates, who supported him from start to finish in the tough stage on Friday. “The guys rode fantastic. We are two men down, but still riding so strong. It’s an incredible thing for me to experience. Doing this in return is the least I could do.”
Yates criticizes Visma teammates
Yates couldn’t follow Del Toro and Carapaz. The number three in the general classification lost half a minute and sees the pink jersey slip further out of reach. The Briton of Visma-Lease a Bike is now 1 minute and 21 seconds behind Del Toro.
Afterwards, Yates was mainly critical of his team, while teammates Wilco Kelderman and Steven Kruijswijk did a lot of work at the front of the chase. “I felt good, but this duo (Del Toro and Carapaz, ed.) is just much more explosive than me.”
“But the plan this morning was completely different from what we did today. We need to discuss that properly with the team. What happened? I won’t say,” the 32-year-old Yates concluded cryptically.
Wout van Aert, who was in the early break, had an idea. “It was useful to be in the break. Then you can help with an attack or when Simon gets into trouble. He perhaps meant more how he wanted to approach the final. He perhaps needed to follow his feeling more than he expected.”