Isaac Del Toro of UAE Team Emirates-XRG claimed his second successive summit finish victory to top the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes GC, overturning Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe’s Luke Tuckwell’s narrow advantage on the final day.
Del Toro won the seventh stage to Grand Colombier and repeated his success on the HC climb to Plateau de Solaison, attacking just a few kilometres into the 11.5km climb which was the fourth and final categorised ascent of the day.
No one was able to respond to 22-year-old Del Toro’s attack and his nearest challenger, Lidl-Trek’s Juan Ayuso, finished exactly a minute in arrears.
Tuckwell, who took yellow on stage six after placing third from the breakaway, finished eighth at Plateau de Solaison. It wasn’t enough to keep hold of yellow, but he did secure a highly commendable and unexpected second place overall. Ayuso rounded out the podium.
Paul Seixas, the pre-race favourite, abandoned after the day’s first climb. He crashed hard on stage seven and had a number of cuts and bruises on his arms, hands and legs.
Whether or not Seixas would have been able to fight Del Toro for the title is unknown, but what is clear is that the Mexican champion has bounced back after crashing out of April’s Itzulia Basque Country.
He has now won all three of the WorldTour stage races he has ridden this season, adding victory at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes to his successes at the UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico.
In fact, he is unbeaten in the last five stage races he has completed, having also won last year’s Tour of Austria and Vuelta a Burgos. Those wins came after he finished second on debut at the Giro d’Italia, spectacularly losing the maglia rosa on the penultimate day to Simon Yates.
Del Toro will now prepare for his maiden Tour de France where he will ride in support of UAE leader and defending champion Tadej Pogačar.
“It’s simply something incredible,” Del Toro said after his victory. “I feel honoured. If you had said to me at the beginning of this year I would have won this race, I would have doubted you.
“It’s an enormous privilege to be in this situation, to be in the best team in the world. I feel very proud and happy because everything happened how we had planned for it to work out.”
He added: “It means a lot to win. It’s super nice and I am obviously super happy about today.”
21-year-old Luke Tuckwell finished 1:43 adrift of stage winner Del Toro to lose yellow but still finished on the overall podium.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
How it happened
The fight for the breakaway broke out as soon as the final and decisive stage got underway in Beaufort, with the Col du Pré beginning immediately. Netcompany-Ineos, who have had a difficult race with the abandonment of Oscar Onley and sub-par performance of Carlos Rodríguez, were represented by three riders: Rodríguez, Kévin Vauquelin and Laurens De Plus.
Léo Bisuaix of Decathlon CMA CGM was also present, as were Georg Steinhauser (EF Education-EasyPost), Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal – Quick-Step), Harold Tejada (XDS-Astana) and Clément Braz Afonso (Groupama-FDJ).
Because Bisuaix was only 4:40 adrift of the yellow jersey, and Vauquelin just over a further minute behind, the breakaway was never permitted an advantage of more than three minutes. At various points the group fractured over the following two categorised claims, but it kept coming back together.
The big news of the first hour of riding, though, was the withdrawal of Seixas after the descent of the first climb. The French teenager crashed on stage seven but despite finishing and signing on for the final day’s racing, the 19-year-old quit after just 30km of racing.
It meant that fellow youngster Tuckwell of Red Bull had one less rider to worry about as he attempted to hold onto yellow. Yet the Aussie knew he would still come under serious pressure from Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike), Ayuso and Del Toro.
Despite some pre-stage predictions of carnage from the get-go, the GC cohort decided against launching attacks early on and instead waited for the final climb of Plateau de Solaison which averages a punishing gradient of 8.9% for 11.5km. The ascent will make its Tour de France debut this July.
At the bottom of the climb, the eight escapees had a lead of 42 seconds, and it didn’t take long for drama to ignite from behind.
Within a kilometre Tuckwell had lost contact with the front of the favourites group, and he stuck obdurately to the wheel of his teammate Maxim Van Gils as he fought to maintain the race lead, and failing that to not fall of the podium.
UAE’s young Spaniard, Pablo Torres, was setting a brutal pace at the front of the group when Del Toro launched a seated attack out of Torres’s wheel with 8.8km to go. No one could respond. No one would see Del Toro again until the very top of the climb.
Within a kilometre Del Toro had a lead of 18 seconds over Ayuso, Jorgenson and Mathias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), and after two kilometres that advantage had doubled. It was Tadej Pogačar-esque.
With 5.3km remaining, Ayuso distanced his teammate Skjelmose and Jorgenson and for a brief while he appeared to be reducing Del Toro’s advantage. But Del Toro only pulled away again, finishing the queen stage exactly a minute ahead of Ayuso.
Jorgenson slipped further back, finishing in the same group as Tuckwell who looked overjoyed to have secured second place overall. Prior to the race, the young Australian was a virtually unknown figure, despite finishing sixth at last month’s Tour de Romandie. Now he has truly burst onto the scene.
But the headlines belong to Del Toro who will be a deluxe domestique for Pogačar in the mountains at the Tour, and will also be a podium contender himself.
Results:Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, stage 8: Beaufort > Plateau de Solaison (120km)
1. Isaac Del Toro (Mex) UAE Team Emirates-XRG, in 3:35.07
2. Juan Ayuso (Esp) Lidl-Trek, at 1:00
3. Tobias Halland Johannessen (Nor) Uno-X Mobility, at 1:02
4. Mattias Skjelmose (Den) Lidl-Trek, at 1:31
5. Cristián Rodríguez (Esp) XDS-Astana, at same time
6. Carlos Rodríguez (Esp) Netcompany-Ineos, at 1:36
7. Maxim Van Girls (Bel) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, at 1:43
8. Luke Tuckwell (Aus) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe
9. Cian Uijtdebroeks (Bel) Movistar
10. Matteo Jorgenson (USA) Visma-Lease a Bike, all at same time.
Final general classification
1. Isaac Del Toro (Mex) UAE Team Emirates-XRG, in 29:35.05
2. Luke Tuckwell (Aus) Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, at 54s
3. Juan Ayuso (Esp) Lidl-Trek, at 1:17
4. Matteo Jorgenson (USA) Visma-Lease a Bike, at 1:36
5. Tobias Halland Johannessen (Nor) Uno-X Mobility, at 1:46
6. Mattias Skjelmose (Den) Lidl-Trek, at 2:41
7. Cian Uijtdebroeks (Bel) Movistar, at 3:11
8. Cristián Rodríguez (Esp) XDS-Astana, at 3:15
9. José Félix Parra (Esp) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA, at 6:25
10. Guillaume Martin (Fra) Groupama-FDJ United, at 7:21
