On Sunday, Isaac del Toro sat down for his eighth press conference as leader of the Giro d'Italia, a week on from taking the maglia rosa in Siena. Eight times he's faced the assembled press, eight times faced questions – directly or indirectly – pertaining to whether or not he is trying to win this Giro, whether he or Juan Ayuso is UAE Team Emirates-XRG's main leader.
In press conference number eight, Del Toro appeared a little more nervous than usual, or maybe just a little less patient. These post-stage responsibilities are tiring, especially for a 21-year-old who's never had to do it before, and is already pretty exhausted by fighting in the GC every day in only his second-ever Grand Tour.
After stage 15, he excused himself after just four questions, having spent less than three and a half minutes with the press.
However, Del Toro's shortest press conference yet may just have been his most revealing. The Mexican is not a man of many words, understandable as he tries to face tricky questions in his third language, but when you're a journalist who sits in front of him every day listening to his answers, it's not hard to detect even the slightest of shifts.
On Sunday evening, Del Toro's answers seemed to ever so slightly shift, and with six stages remaining, the maglia rosa wearer is beginning to see himself as a possible leader within UAE.
"Maybe, we need to see," was Del Toro's initial, typically non-committal answer to a question about whether he is thinking about winning this Giro, but what he said next was interesting.
"Because Ayuso and Adam are so strong, and we need to play the cards well and be there with everybody. We will see who will play in the last week, but for sure, I showed that I'm quite good, and we need to play with the three of us.
I showed I'm good. We need to play with the three of us. Until now, Del Toro has mainly spoken about 'them', not 'us'. They – Ayuso and Yates – are the leaders, he has been saying. But finally, he's thinking about 'us', thinking about himself.
All week, both Del Toro and his UAE team have either outright refused to answer questions about leadership or erred on the side of caution, pointing at Ayuso, the rider who was meant to be their top option in this race. But with Del Toro now leading the race by 1:20, and 1:26 ahead of Ayuso, it's getting to a point where it would be strange if they didn't address his chances of winning.
Only a few days after one UAE sports director abruptly terminated an interview with Cyclingnews when a simple question about Del Toro's qualities was posed, the team took a very different approach when we asked on Sunday morning if the Mexican could win the Giro.
"Of course," was DS Matxin Joxean Fernandez' answer.
Del Toro too was keen not to say that he thought he was going to win the Giro, but has started to admit that if the chance is there in the coming week, he is going to take it – and that is different from the rider that's previously been adamant that this is not his race to win.
"I need to realise that I am able to win the Giro, because I don't want to be arrogant and say 'yes, for sure'," he said. "But if I'm in this position, then of course I want to win like everybody else, but I need to do it in the best way possible and realise that of course there's a chance, and try to take it. It's not 100%, it's just doing it step by step, and not making mistakes, because sometimes little mistakes can put you far away."
Del Toro is, of course, right to be realistic about his chances. A minute and twenty seconds is not going to be a huge amount when this Giro hits some very long climbs in the third week, and he has never ridden GC like this before, but with only five decisive stages left, the opportunities for him to crack are becoming fewer.
The question about whether Ayuso might, should or could attack his own teammate to try and take pink is also a tough one. UAE can't really be seen to be going offensive against their own rider, but, despite Del Toro's protestations that they were just trying to stay safe, the team did appear to close the gap to the Mexican on stage 15 when he was up the road in a group without Ayuso.
There are also clearly still tensions, or at least divisions, within the UAE camp – Del Toro and Ayuso are not always together in the bunch, and at the finish on Sunday, the Spaniard rode through the finish, talking to Egan Bernal, whilst Del Toro stopped to hug and debrief with Yates and Rafał Majka.
It may still not be set in stone who UAE are trying to protect, and likely they're going to see how it plays out on the road, but with the gaps sitting as they are, both team and rider are finally starting to consider the fact that if they want to win this Giro, Del Toro might be the way they do it.
"We remain ambitious, we need to maintain our position," Fernandez concluded. "We have to keep fighting our rivals and keep fighting together, to keep the maglia rosa."
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