Giro del Veneto: Isaac del Toro solos to 16th win of season

UAE Team Emirates-XRG' Isaac del Toro soloed to victory in the Giro del Veneto, marking his 16th win of the season as the team's dominant autumn continues, claiming 1-2 with Pavel Sivakov the runner-up in Verona.

The young Mexican profited off the work of his team to set him up over the final laps around Verona, attacking at the bottom of the final ascent of Torricella Massimiliana climb to go solo for more than 10km and win almost uncontested.

A fairly large chase group assembled behind Del Toro, but they just couldn't get organised enough to eat into his lead, and they were left to battle for second and third. Sivakov attacked out of the group in the final kilometre to make it first and second for UAE, whilst Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility) sprinted to third.

Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) initially followed Del Toro's attack after a lot of work from his team, but couldn't stay with him for long, and was swept up by the chasers and finished outside of the podium.

"It wasn't easy. It was a full effort by the whole team," Del Toro said at the finish. "It's incredible to manage another victory. I didn't feel fully committed, but the team was always there for me and I just wanted to finish it off because they worked the whole day. It was all-in today.

"When Pavel went so fast in the beginning [of the laps] and also in the second-to-last climb I thought there would be a good moment to attack, but in the end we wanted to wait until the last lap climb [to attack]."

How it unfolded

Starting in Vicenza on Wednesday afternoon, the Giro del Veneto saw the peloton take on a flat first half of the race, before completing five laps of the Verona circuit, characterised by the Torricella Massimiliana climb (4km at 5%) and an uphill kick to the line.

In the early part of the day, it took some 50km for a break to form, and even then the eight man group was never given a big gap, and didn't include any particularly threatening riders, though the retiring Elia Viviani (Lotto) did get in the move on his final day of racing on the road.

They entered the local laps with a 1:30 gap, and slowly broke apart over the first two laps, with all the leaders caught with 34km to go, before the last two laps.

With the break caught, the race started to heat up with Groupama-FDJ and UAE Team Emirates-XRG setting a hard pace, particularly on the climbs. On the penultimate time up the climb, Pavel Sivakov led the attempt to make things harder, which really stretched out and shrunk the group, though no moves got away from the front.

With 20km to go, it was still Groupama and UAE pushing on in a heavily reduced group, with only around 40 riders left in the peloton with a lap and a half to go. These two teams kept drilling the pace on the flat and into the final lap, trying to put weaker riders in trouble and set things up for the final time up the climb.

Hitting the Torricella Massimiliana for the final time, Sivakov was leading the peloton, but it didn't take long for his teammate Del Toro to launch off his effort and break away some 2.2km from the top. Romain Grégoire was initially on his wheel, but couldn't hold on for long and soon the Mexican was solo with just over 10km to the finish line.

Del Toro quickly built up a gap of 20 seconds over Grégoire, who was soon brought back by a chasing group led by Sivakov, leaving just Del Toro in the lead with a disorganised chase behind. Various teams and riders tried to attack in the finale, but didn't make any progress as Del Toro soloed towards the victory.

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