We all wanted the rainbow jersey. A Mexican road world champion sounds like a movie. It didn't happen. Brandon McNulty won, riding solo for 32 kilometers, and nobody saw him again. And still, I can't stop thinking about how El Torito raced.
Because at his first big Worlds, at 22, Isaac del Toro didn't hide in the bunch to see what he'd get. He went to attack.
Climb after climb, on that Camillien-Houde that Montréal repeats until it breaks you, he pushed. He moved the race. He went toe to toe with the monsters of the peloton. And when McNulty rode away alone, he kept fighting up front until the end. He finished 5th in the world, one second off the podium. One second.
It hurts because it was so close. But there are two ways to race a Worlds. One is to hide and hope luck sorts you out. The other is to grab the race with both hands and decide how it gets raced. He chose the second. And in the long run, that's the one that wins.
I say it all the time in my world: the strongest doesn't win, the one who reads the race best and dares to move it does. Del Toro dared. At 22, against the best on the planet, one second from the world podium.
That's not a ceiling. It's a floor.
The rainbow will wait. And something tells me not for long.
Ro
Sources: World Championship result and race report.