{"id":239971,"date":"2025-10-25T13:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T13:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/239971\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T13:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T13:49:08","slug":"not-unreasonable-to-compare-him-with-pogacar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/239971\/","title":{"rendered":"“Not unreasonable to compare him with Pogacar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Isaac del Toro<\/a> has long been tipped as one of cycling\u2019s next great all-rounders \u2014 but after a 2025 season featuring 16 victories, a Giro d\u2019Italia podium, and a top-three finish in the UCI world rankings, even seasoned observers are beginning to run out of superlatives.According to TV 2 Sport\u2019s cycling analyst Emil Axelgaard, the 21-year-old Mexican\u2019s meteoric rise has been so complete that comparisons with Tadej Pogacar<\/a> are no longer far-fetched.\u201cIt\u2019s not unreasonable to compare him with Pogacar,\u201d Axelgaard said in analysis for TV 2 Sport<\/a>. \u201cOf course, he\u2019s not yet at the Slovenian\u2019s level, but he has the same extraordinary versatility. There\u2019s nothing he can\u2019t do. He\u2019s explosive, he can sprint, he can handle long climbs \u2014 and when he rode his first proper time trial at the 2024 Volta ao Algarve, he surprised everyone by finishing fourth, ahead of riders such as Filippo Ganna.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\u201cBuilt for hilly one-day races, but can win anything\u201dAxelgaard believes del Toro\u2019s range makes him unique among the sport\u2019s emerging generation. With a background in cyclocross, the young UAE Team Emirates – XRG<\/a> rider already possesses the technical control and explosiveness to compete in nearly every terrain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means he can realistically target almost any type of race,\u201d Axelgaard explained. \u201cRight now, it\u2019s perhaps hard to see him focusing on the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix \u2014 though Flanders might not be entirely out of reach \u2014 but he\u2019s built for hilly one-day races, and clearly he can also compete in both Grand Tours and week-long stage races. In fact, he\u2019s won every type of race like that this year, apart from the Grand Tours, where he had to \u2018settle\u2019 for second place at the Giro.\u201d<\/p>\n

Del Toro\u2019s 2025 campaign has been a showcase of that breadth: victories at the Giro della Toscana, Trofeo Matteotti and Giro del Veneto complemented his standout Grand Tour performance, where he wore the maglia rosa for 10 stages and claimed a mountain-top win in Bormio.<\/p>\n

Areas to improve \u2014 but few limits<\/p>\n

Even with such results, Axelgaard suggests the Mexican still has two major areas to refine.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis time trialling is good, but he\u2019s not yet at the level of Pogacar, Vingegaard or Evenepoel,\u201d he noted. \u201cWe also saw at the Giro that he still struggles on the really big mountain days with multiple long climbs \u2014 something that was probably confirmed again at Il Lombardia. Those are two key areas for improvement that will largely determine how great a Grand Tour rider he becomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet after an astonishing first full season in the WorldTour, Axelgaard believes any remaining gaps are likely to close quickly \u2014 and that the sport\u2019s new Mexican star is only just getting started. \u201cGiven his second place at the Giro this year, there\u2019s little reason to doubt that he\u2019ll soon close those gaps.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isaac del Toro has long been tipped as one of cycling\u2019s next great all-rounders \u2014 but after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-239971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}