The penultimate day of this Giro d’Italia was set up to be a battle between the maglia rosa, Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), only for a textbook Visma-Lease a Bike move that catapulted Simon Yates into the pink jersey, redeeming himself seven years after he himself lost La Corsa Rosa on the Colle delle Finestre. It was a dramatic finale to this intriguing race and only added to the legend of the final climb.
Yates had around 1:40 of a gap on the Finestre’s summit, which put him the virtual pink jersey by around 0:20 and then he linked up with domestique deluxe Wout van Aert, who had survived the Finestre in the break as a satellite rider. The gap kept growing and growing while the Giro title slipped from the 21-year-old Del Toro’s grip. In the end, it was Del Toro and Carapaz’s lack of cooperation which also saw both their pink dreams disappear up the road. For the uproar about whether or not he should have paced with Carapaz in the valley between the Finestre and Sestiere (he should have), UAE lost this Giro long before Yates slipped away on the gravel climb. Tactical errors were strewn throughout this Giro by the reigning champions, seemingly obsessed with getting as many riders high up on GC only to lose the most important position of all — the top step.
All Giro, UAE played a strange strategy, for long periods not nailing down who their leader was. Besides Rafał Majka and his sterling work on stage 19, the team didn’t deploy their mountain domestiques to best use and when they did, it was sporadic and inconsistent. They did not insist that Adam Yates and Brandon McNulty go all-in in the service of Del Toro and it shows on the GC leaderboard, second place for the Mexican in a Grand Tour he was capable of winning and three other riders in the top 13 – positions that are virtually meaningless for a team of this depth and quality.
Today, Del Toro was isolated in the last 30km when he didn’t need to be. As strong as Van Aert was to get over the climb, there is no way that Brandon McNulty wouldn’t have been capable of doing the same thing, surviving the Finestre and pacing Del Toro in the valley. Obviously, the other teams wouldn’t have let in the day’s break because he was too close on GC. It’s easy to say in hindsight, but as soon as Del Toro took the jersey, they should have ordered Adam Yates, Brandon McNulty, and Rafał Majka to lose as much time…