The Tour de l’Avenir

In the Tour de l’Avenir, how did the team time trial, which was very prejudicial to Mexico, affected Isaac?

They lost 3:40 minutes, but fortunately they put out this rule where you can’t lose more than 2 minutes. So I had meetings with Isaac every day to discuss tactics and the day before I told him: ‘The reality is that, you will lose more than 2 minutes, because some teams are really strong while we lack some equipment and didn’t train the team time trial before. What I recommend is that you don’t do a max effort, because you’d rather not waste energy for the next days. Yes, it’s going to be hard to recover from those two minutes, but I think you are still able to win Avenir. ’ He was pretty calm: ‘Ok, I’ll do that and we’ll recover the time.’

On Stage 4, Isaac started recovering and on the Col de la Loze, he triumphed. How did you live that day and exactly how important you were to Isaac (according to him)?

When he was 2nd [Stage 4], we saw him attack at 15 km to go and the peloton wasn’t able to catch him, only the Swiss rider that beat him on the line. But I saw his power numbers and I was like: ‘Isaac, you’re going to do great this Tour de l’Avenir. So we have some time to catch up and Col de la Loze is a really hard climb, which gets even harder on the last 7 km. There’s Loze on Friday, then on Saturday the time trial and the B stage, then another hard stage on Sunday, so don’t try to catch up all the time on Friday, because you still have three more stages to go’

A cyclist’s climbing ability is of little use without the knowledge on how to manage their effort. Freddy Cruz always tried to instill this intelligence in del Toro, through the tactics he conveyed to him via messages.

So, the tactic was to attack 5 to 3 km from the finish line, because that’s where it has 16% to 20% constantly. He was going to do a 30/40 minute effort, taking 15/20 minutes [in that section], so I didn’t want him to burn all the matches attacking before. He attacked exactly at 4 km to go. That’s when I knew he was going to be up there and he got confident, so he was able to pull it off and recovered a lot of time.

After conquering Col de la Loze, Isaac experienced mixed sensations in the time trial of Stage 7a. What made him lose time that morning?

In the time trial, he made a big mistake, hence losing those 46 seconds to Matthew Riccitello. Isaac wasn’t feeling well that day, but at that point everybody was tired. He did a protocol warm-up, I took some notes, when he got up to the trainer and warmed up for 15 minutes, he was like ‘I’m getting tired’. He got off the trainer and headed to the starting line, where he sat around for 20 minutes doing nothing, and then he started like this. The pressure and nerves got into his head, that was the mistake. I told him: ‘We still have this, Isaac. You have two stages left to recover this time’. So I told him to attack on the climb before the finish, just to test everybody else’s legs. He was feeling good and he was able to get more confident. He attacked with 3/4 km to go and recovered about 20 seconds to Riccitello.

It was also at this point that some changes started to become obvious, namely the fact that some riders refused to cooperate with Isaac during his attack on Stage 7b. How can a rider deal with this kind of situation?

It depends on the race situation. For example, on Saturday, when Isaac attacked, an Italian rider [Giulio Pellizzari] went with him and he didn’t want to cooperate, because he was 5th in GC and his teammate was 2nd. And Isaac and the Italians are friends, they actually bet a pizza and a gelato that they were going to beat each other on Avenir! So that was race tactics, but why did Isaac kept going carrying the Italian on his wheel? Because he was only thinking about winning the GC. Since Isaac attacked, his only mission was to catch up more time to Riccitello. In that situation, you can’t do much.

Depende da situação da corrida. No sábado, quando o Isaac atacou, um ciclista italiano [Giulio Pellizzari] foi com ele e não quis cooperar, porque estava em 5º lugar na classificação geral e o seu colega de equipa estava em 2º. E o Isaac e os italianos até são amigos, apostaram até uma pizza e um gelado que iam ganhar uns aos outros no Avenir (risos)! Aquilo eram táticas de corrida, mas então porque é que o Isaac continuou a levar o italiano na roda? Porque ele só estava a pensar em vencer a classificação geral. Desde que o Isaac atacou, a única missão dele era recuperar tempo para o Riccitello. Então, nessa situação, não podia fazer mais.

In the context of Isaac del Toro’s pursuit of the yellow jersey, the matter becomes of straightforward resolution and the example from the following day demonstrates how quickly things can change.

On the last stage, he got in a good breakaway with Giulio Pellizaari, Archie Ryan and some other riders in the top-10. They were cooperating, but then they stopped because they were really tired and Isaac was going very hard. So he just kept on pulling and dropping them one by one. The only rider who stayed with Isaac was the Italian, who helped him this time because it was in his favour to go from 4th to 2nd place. They became allies. It depends on the race situation. Isaac was only thinking about winning Avenir, so he just searched for the win and went.

Going a little backward on Stage 8, how did you plan and Isaac planned his winning move? Then, how did you celebrated that great victory?

Well, he was 54 seconds behind and I told him: ‘This is a stage to either kill or be killed. Obviously, if you’re going to attack do it in the right moment, but I think you can do it far from the finish’. So he attacked at 50 km to go and the rest is history: he opened up more than 2 minutes to Riccitello and was able to get the win.

History for Mexico! Isaac Del Toro conquers the Tour de l’Avenir, adding his name to a list of winners that includes the likes of Nairo Quintana, Egan Bernal, and Tadej Pogačar. Naturally, not only for Freddy Cruz but also for all Mexican fans, this was an unforgettable moment.

I have a few days in my life that I remember as being the best. One of them is when Garmin offered me the contract exactly on my birthday, August 2nd 2010, and I remember that day really well. Now, me and some friends did a coffee ride and finished it watching the stage. As soon as he finished, I got out of the coffee shop and started crying. I couldn’t believe that moment. Then I started receiving calls from my parents, my brother… and I just kept on crying, I couldn’t even speak, it was really amazing!