{"id":398097,"date":"2026-01-07T18:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T18:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/398097\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T18:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T18:55:09","slug":"the-idea-was-to-send-both-joao-almeida-and-del-toro-to-the-giro-ditalia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/398097\/","title":{"rendered":"The idea was to send both Jo\u00e3o Almeida and Del Toro to the Giro d\u2019Italia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cInitially, yes. We thought about it and talked it through. The idea was to send both Jo\u00e3o Almeida and Del Toro to the Giro d\u2019Italia to try and win it. But then other considerations came into play,&#8221; the Spaniard continued. &#8220;We\u2019re talking about a 22-year-old Mexican, a country that has enormous enthusiasm for cycling thanks to Isaac, but no great cycling tradition yet. What if he were to finish second? For them, he has to win&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t put Del Toro in a situation where he has to do something &#8211; and we don\u2019t want that either. He has to enjoy cycling, approach every race with passion and calm. Going to the <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/tour-de-france\" title=\"Tour de France\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tour de France<\/a> now, together with the best rider in the world and the best team in the world, is an opportunity for us,&#8221; Matxin explains. Only in a team such as UAE would Del Toro have the opportunity, at this point in time, to make his Tour de France debut whilst not being in the spotlight. The World Champion will instead be in this spot, as he looks to take a record-matching fifth yellow jersey.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPogacar is not only a benchmark for us, but for cycling as a whole. So having Del Toro in the Tour doesn\u2019t mean responsibility, but trust and experience for the future,&#8221; the team believes.<\/p>\n<p>However, as Adam Yates did in 2023 (third) and Jo\u00e3o Almeida did in 2024 (fourth), Del Toro should be in the running himself at the same time. &#8220;It\u2019s clear that he won\u2019t just be a domestique. We\u2019re not asking anything of him, except that he\u2019s there. He\u2019s an enormous talent and deserves this opportunity, just as Jo\u00e3o did before him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cInitially, yes. We thought about it and talked it through. The idea was to send both Jo\u00e3o Almeida&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,93896,85,6494,2845,19805],"class_list":["post-398097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-isaac-del-toro","tag-sports","tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-tour-de-france","tag-uae-team-emirates-xrg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398097","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=398097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}