Isaac Del Toro mortgages success at Tirreno-Adriatico
By winning the fifth stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico, which led the peloton from San Severino Marche to Camerino after a 188-kilometer route, Isaac De Toro (UAE Team Emirates XRG) is inching closer and closer to definitively conquering the Corsa dei Due Mari, as far as the 2026 edition is concerned. The Mexican rider moved ahead of Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) and Matteo Jorgenson (Team Visma-Lease a Bike) by 3″ at the finish line, further stretching in the general classification over his main rival, Giulio Pellizzari.
Between Del Toro, who will start tomorrow from Civitanova Marche in the blue jersey, and the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider from Marche, there are in fact 42″: an important gap in light of the altimetry of the final stage, which poses as its only difficulty the Ripatransone climb 90 kilometers from the finish, before an entirely flat finish in which UAE Team Emirates XRG is unlikely to let Pellizzari or another of Del Toro’s rivals produce a breakaway.
On the sidelines of the stage, Del Toro expressed all his satisfaction: “It was a meter by meter fight, I am so happy to have made it – said the Ensenada-born rider on Nov. 27, 2003 -. Yesterday I had expressed my desire to win the stage, but when Pellizzari attacked I wasn’t sure if I could get back. We could not give him too much space. There is one stage to go, we have to stay focused and bring home the blue jersey”.
Del Toro, should he actually confirm his lead in the general classification on Sunday as well, would be the first Mexican cyclist to win the Tirreno-Adriatico. Only one other compatriot of his, in the previous sixty editions of the Corsa dei Due Mari, has placed on the podium: that is Raúl Alcalá, who in 1992 finished second just 13″ from that year’s winner, the Dane Rolf Sørensen.
As for the Italians, the last overall success remains that of Vincenzo Nibali in 2013 (the Shark also won the year before): since then, two Spaniards (Alberto Contador in 2014 and Juan Ayuso in 2025), two Slovenians (Primoz Roglic in 2019 and 2023, Tadej Pogacar in 2021-2022), a Colombian (Nairo Quintana in 2015 and 2017), a Belgian (Greg Van Avermaet in 2016), a Pole (Michał Kwiatkowski in 2018), a Briton (Simon Yates in 2020) and a Dane (Jonas Vingegaard in 2024) have won.
