Isaac del Toro was ready to race. He knew his reputation was going to be tested. On May 20, 2025, the 21-year-old Mexican was waiting to start the Giro d’Italia’s 10th stage, a 28.6-kilometre time trial, a solo effort that had the potential to solidify or shatter his standing. A long-sleeve pink aero suit hugged his wiry 178-centimetre frame. He was ready to accelerate down a narrow street that cut through the multistorey buildings to the outer edge of the historic centre in Lucca, in the rolling green hills east of Florence. Two days earlier, during stage nine, he attacked hard on the legendary white gravel roads en route to the steep paving stones of the climb into the nearby town of Siena. Leading the race, he pushed hard alongside Belgian rider Wout van Aert to establish an advantage over his top rivals. He crossed the line more than a minute ahead of challengers Richard Carapaz and Simon Yates. Shortly after the finish, while still recovering from the effort, he learned that he had likely moved up into first place in the general classification. His normally stoic visage melted into a mess of emotion. He purged tears of joy, embracing his UAE Emirates team staff in jubilation, then grasping his helmet in apparent disbelief. “I don’t know! I don’t know!” he sobbed. Del Toro’s team was stacked with veterans and aspiring race leaders, but when he saw an opportunity, he attacked audaciously. Race officials confirmed that the Mexican cyclist had leapfrogged his team-mate Juan Ayuso, who was then in fourth place in the general classification, and he’d earned the right to pull on the race leader’s pink jersey for the first time. And so, on a wet afternoon in Lucca, he had his first opportunity to defend the jersey. Del Toro knew this was his chance to show cycling fans around the world his poise, his powerful, punchy style of riding and his maturity when confronting difficult circumstances.
Image: Dario Belingheri / Getty
POISE
Waiting to ride stage 10 in Lucca, Del Toro avoided thinking about the fact that he was the first Mexican cyclist to wear the Giro’s GC leader’s maglia rosa. He knew that it was an honour that marked his arrival as a serious contender in the peloton. Even in the thrill of the moment, as the final few minutes passed leading up to his 4:40pm start time, he worked to keep his focus on the task at hand. He needed to be mentally ready to race.
“I woke up with a cool feeling because it was going to be my first time as the leader of a Grand Tour. I enjoyed it. I was very happy,” he tells Rouleur in a follow-up interview conducted during July.
Rain clouds darkened overhead. The road was already wet. The weather report warned of ongoing afternoon showers.
“I knew I was going to have conditions that weren’t the best,” he says. “I didn’t want to fall. I wanted to get to the finish line with the jersey. I convinced myself that it was the same for everybody. I didn’t want to think I had a disadvantage.”
One by one, his top rivals left the start gate. The countdown clock sounded out a series of electronic pips. Bop-bop-bop-bop-bop. Beeeeeep! Del Toro shot out onto the race course, rocking his bike side to side as he accelerated past the metal barriers and fans, up onto the bike path skirting the top of the medieval-era wall that rings Lucca. He navigated a series of corners on streets crossing through residential neighbourhoods. As he pedalled, he focused on keeping his core taut and his breathing steady. Out on the open road, he found drier pavement and pushed hard, slicing through the Tuscan landscape. As he approached the final stretch into Pisa, he knew that a series of technical and potentially dangerous corners lay between him and the finish line. Too cautious an approach would have lost him too much time and the maglia rosa, but an overzealous entry into one of the final curves would have been catastrophic. A crash could have ended not just his stint in pink, but also his participation in the Giro.
“The final was very wet. The plan was to not take risks just to get a few seconds. It was slippery. I braked a bit more to avoid risk. I paid closer attention in the curves,” he says.
Image: Sara Cavallini / Getty
He rode the course twice before the race but didn’t have time to fully memorise the trajectory to the finish line. He relied on turn-by-turn guidance from the team radio. He avoided ruminating on the significance of holding onto the jersey and scrutinised the details of the race course ahead of him. Splatter from the wet roads did not cloud the clear visor of his helmet. He could see the path ahead.
“I was more focused on not falling,” he says. “I knew I was strong enough and if I did things right, I’d hold onto the maglia rosa.”
He came in 36th, but crucially he’d done enough to stay 25 seconds ahead of his team-mate Ayuso and hold on to the maglia rosa. His first day defending the jersey showed his strength as a cyclist, but also his poise under pressure.
“In general, I just try to not take things too seriously. I know things happen. I just live through everything as a normal day. That helps me make better decisions and be more attentive to the things that are really important,” he says.
Del Toro has been racing bicycles since he was in elementary school. He competed in Mexico’s National Cycling Championship when he was 14. He often found himself bored in school, waiting for class to finish so he could ride. The state of Baja California, where he grew up, is known for its factories, its beaches, and its arid landscapes and hot summers. It’s a destination for surfers and bikepackers from the USA, but not a cradle for producing top-level athletes. It has beautiful mountain biking trails but few institutions or organisations dedicated to developing elite athletes. In general, public high schools in Mexico treat sports as an informal recreational activity to distract students during breaks from study or before classes start. Universities are built as training hubs for future professionals. Mexico’s schools produce engineers, scientists, accountants and managers but few world-class student athletes. Mexico has a vibrant cycling community and a wide range of amateur races for adult riders. The country is also blessed with ample mountainous terrain and steep, winding, high-altitude roads. The terrain in much of the country is similar to areas of Colombia and Ecuador (or Colorado and Utah) but the mountain towns in Mexico have produced few cyclists who compete in the WorldTour. Mexico has the geography of a cycling mecca, but lacks the institutions for developing globally competitive riders. Cyclists, like most elite athletes in Mexico, emerge mostly from families who pursue sports as a top priority. Del Toro’s parents always guided him to want to work to excel in sport, and he chose to follow his father’s passion for cycling. His mother always encouraged him to take a rigorous approach to his training. But the focus was always on development rather than results. He learned early on to take an obsessive, analytical approach to race tactics, strategy, training, and preparation. He also learned to keep cool.
As the rain poured down in Pisa, I fought my way through the crowd of journalists in the press area for the chance to ask him a quick question as he prepared to return to the team bus.
“How does it feel to know that tomorrow you’re going to wake up with the pink jersey again?” I asked.
“It’s incredible. It’s like a dream I still can’t believe,” he replied.
POWER
Stage 17 was another serious test for Del Toro. One day earlier he showed his first signs of cracking under the pressure and effort of the moment. On the final climb of the day, he failed to follow a blistering acceleration by Carapaz, Ecuador’s top cyclist, a veteran rider and respected climber who won the Giro in 2019. Del Toro was also dropped by Simon Yates, another established pro who made his Grand Tour debut at the Tour de France in 2014 and nearly won the Giro in 2018 before going on to win that year’s Vuelta a España. When Yates was already racing professionally in cycling’s most prestigious stage race, Del Toro was only nine years old, practicing climbing on the small hill near his parents’ house in the beach town of Ensenada on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. In 2023 I interviewed Del Toro in Mexico City a few days after he won the Tour l’Avenir in France, an achievement that flagged him as one of the top under-23 riders in the world. He had just signed a contract with UAE Emirates and he told me he imagined racing in UAE’s white, red, and black uniform would feel like he was pulling on a superhero costume. Now he had to prove he was able to follow Carapaz and Yates. On stage 16 he was simply unable to hold their pace. Some commentators and fans wondered if he was starting to fall apart. At the start of stage 17, Del Toro knew he had a chance to show his true power and the depth of his ability. “The truth is I just really wanted to deliver the best version of myself. I wanted to try and not hold anything back for later,” he says.
He knew he had to shake off the disappointment from his stage 16 fragility and start fighting again.
“I felt good. I wanted to compete with the peloton and see how they reacted. I didn’t want to have any regrets,” he says.
He saw his struggles on stage 16 as a badge of honour, not as evidence of his inadequacy, or the warning sign of an impending implosion.
“I think it would be foolish to feel humiliated for that,” he says. It’s a sentiment that mirrors the teaching of Roman philosopher Epictetus: “It is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. Your mind is complicit in the provocation.”
Image: Dario Belingheri / Getty
During stage 16, he withstood the first barrage from his top rivals. But on the final climb he wasn’t able to match the most brutal efforts from Yates and Carapaz. Yet he didn’t implode, and Del Toro clung on bravely to finish the day still wearing the pink jersey.
He had less room for error on stage 17: he was only 26 seconds in front of Yates and 31 seconds ahead of Carapaz.
“Everybody in the general classification [battle] attacked me at the Giro. I liked getting this chance to go deep and arrive dead at the finish line. I suffered. But it was one of the days I enjoyed the most in the whole Giro,” he says.
He had been able to speak with his family after finishing stage 16. He came away from those conversations focused on the work in front of him.
“It’s about having a plan of what we want to do from the beginning and not allowing ourselves to change the plan after bad days. We have to keep the goal in mind, even when the circumstances change,” he says.
He fell asleep in his bed at the hotel in the town of Torbole sul Garda at peace.
“It was the day that I slept best. It was my best sleep at the Giro d’Italia,” he says.
On stage 17 he had the chance to redeem himself, to fight back while ascending just under 1,000 vertical metres on the formidable Mortirolo, a 12.6km-long climb with maximum gradients over 16 per cent. “I felt good. I attacked with Carapaz. I saw that he was more on the limit than I was,” he explains. Over the top of the last summit of the course, he saw a chance to push his advantage.
“On the descent [Carapaz] fell behind. When I saw he left a gap I gave everything to get to the finish line,” explains Del Toro.
He felt good, fresh. In the final few metres, he fired his legs like pistons and churned the pedals relentlessly as he closed in on the finish line.
Mirroring the exaggerated grace of a victorious bullfighter, he bowed to the crowd as he crossed the line, his arms draped sideways for balance. He flashed the showmanship of a star. His frenetic finish left him 41 seconds ahead of Carapaz and 51 seconds ahead of Yates in the general classification.
“I went as fast as I could,” he says. “I enjoyed it. I was able to win.”
Del Toro credits his explosiveness more to consistency in training and diet than to any special new protocol in the gym. None of the schools he attended in Mexico had weight rooms. He only started doing deadlifts and squats during his late teenage years when he started competing at an elite level. When he joined the AR Monex team in 2019 he started a basic programme of posterior chain strength development, doing 10-rep sets of Romanian deadlifts and back squats. He also honed his muscular endurance riding up the gravel road on Mexico’s Nevado de Toluca, reaching an altitude of 4,250m above sea level. His off-season preparation for the 2025 Giro, however, actually included almost no heavy or explosive weightlifting. During the spring he was able to do some lifting but more focused on maintaining strength rather than pushing his ceiling for muscle fibre activation and raw power.
“I didn’t train all of January at the gym because I had a knee injury. I did a bit of gym work, but not like we planned,” he says.
Image: Luca Bettini / Getty
PÉRDIDA (LOSS)
Going into stage 20, Del Toro knew he’d have to fight all the way to the finish line, ascending more than 4,000m, including 18.5km with ramps with gradients as steep as 14 per cent and a gravel pathway up the notoriously difficult Colle delle Finestre.
“We wanted to defend the jersey as a team. We wanted to be together and ready. We wanted to protect the time we had [leading] the general classification,” he explains.
In the days after stage 16, he proved on multiple occasions that he could match Carapaz’s attacks. But he also knew that his hold on the pink jersey wasn’t yet fully secured.
“I was thinking about Derek Gee, Simon Yates and Carapaz as people who could potentially hurt us in the general classification,” he says.
During stage 20, the riders from Carapaz’s EF Education-EasyPost team led the ascent up the Colle delle Finestre.
“It’s not easy to hold the wheel of these cyclists,” says Del Toro.
He paid close attention as the storyline of the stage reached its denouement in front of him. He watched the EF riders work. He wasn’t scared of faltering. He wasn’t being pushed to his limit. The plot appeared to be unfolding as planned, with the group splintering and Carapaz riding in front alone. Del Toro advanced to follow Carapaz’s attack, and the two rode together trailing only a few satellite riders up ahead in the breakaway.
He was ready for the final showdown with Carapaz.
Del Toro was unflustered when Yates bridged across to join the two Latin American contenders.
When he saw Yates pull off in front and attack, Del Toro chose to stay with Carapaz. He still viewed the Ecuadorian as the primary threat.
“I wasn’t thinking anything in that moment. I stuck with the plan,” he says.
“[Carapaz] was closer to me in the GC. I was paying more attention to what he was doing, and I saw he wasn’t giving it his all,” he adds.
He had already embraced the idea that stage 20 would end up being his final battle with Carapaz. Over the course of the day, he withstood all of Carapaz’s attacks. But cycling isn’t boxing: it’s war. Del Toro’s myopic focus on Carapaz ended up leaving him exposed to the surprise assault by Yates.
“At one point they warned me on the radio that [Yates’s team-mate] Van Aert was out in front and Simon had 40 seconds’ advantage on us,” says Del Toro.
Del Toro now knew that Yates had set a record-breaking pace up the climb and that a mid-race shift of focus from matching Carapaz to catching Yates would have required a truly historic performance. He insists that if he had the chance to relive that moment, he could have regained the time he lost to Yates.
“I knew it was possible, but I also knew Carapaz wasn’t giving everything,” he says.
Instead, he rode the final few kilometres alongside Carapaz, knowing that Van Aert was towing Yates all the way to the finish line and into the maglia rosa. After one final hard acceleration to distance himself from Carapaz as he crossed the finish line, Del Toro quickly turned his attention to the situation in front of him.
“I knew I had lost the Giro. I wanted to arrive [to see] my family, my team and be with them. I lost the Giro, but in an incredible fashion. I learned a lot in these three weeks. It was magnificent,” he says.
While Carapaz’s first action was to disparage Del Toro in a bitter and brief interview, Del Toro rolled to a stop and turned to embrace his rival and friend Giulio Pellizzari.
“He’s a great friend. We really get along,” he says. Defeat provided a chance to demonstrate his composure. Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius once advised, “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.”
After the stage, he talked to reporters, commended his team-mates and said that as a group they did the best they could in the moment. He also advised his fans in his home country, “Mexicans have to understand: we didn’t win. We were the first to lose, and that’s okay. It’s very beautiful to get so close, but we didn’t win.”
Other athletes in this situation might have collapsed in tears or erupted in frustration. Del Toro chose to stay cool.
“It’s the way I want to be,” he says. “I choose to be that way when things don’t seem to be going right. I try to maintain control when things are good and when things are bad, both sides of the coin.”
He isn’t familiar with the stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, but does believe that athletes can only control their thoughts and actions, not external circumstances. “I agree with that,” he says, laughing.
He does think he’ll have a chance to fight for victory at the Giro in the future. His main takeaway is that he now believes with absolute certainty that he has the profile of a cyclist who can win a Grand Tour.
Del Toro finished the 2025 Giro having ridden in the pink jersey for 11 days. He stood in second place on the podium on the final day in Rome and also won the white jersey for the best rider under age 25. Del Toro’s performance at the 2025 Giro has already earned him recognition as Mexico’s best ever cyclist and one of the brightest young stars in the sport. Throughout his time in front of the TV cameras and press photographers while wearing the pink jersey he showed little interest in revelling in the attention from the public. He completed the daily post-stage prize ceremonies and media interviews with professional detachment and dedicated his effort and energy to the craft of racing and winning.
On Sunday June 1, when Del Toro crossed the finish line at stage 21, I was already back in Mexico City. I rode along with a celebratory peloton composed of cyclists representing different local clubs and teams. Several people talked to me about the mix of emotions they felt watching Del Toro’s stunning achievements and abrupt and jarring loss at the Giro. There is immense pride in Mexico’s cycling community that a rider who once trained in the massive mountains outside of Mexico City (where several alpine roads top out at over 3,600m above sea level) had a chance to compete against the world’s top professionals on Italy’s most iconic roads. When the group of several hundred riders wearing pink and white jerseys coalesced around the Angel of Independence monument on the capital’s wide Reforma Avenue, an ebullient chant erupted: “Torito! Torito! Torito!” In Mexico, the feeling about Del Toro’s exploits at the 2025 Giro may have already shifted from disappointment to gratitude.
Del Toro, however, is already thinking about redemption. Since the Giro, he has won three stages and the GC of the Tour of Austria and two one-day races in Spain, with more to come.
“I focus on improving, on being a better cyclist,” he says. “I’d like to come back [to the Giro]. I have to do things right for the future. You have to be ready when the opportunity presents itself.”