PARIS — Mexican Isaac del Toro won the seventh stage of the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes to close in on overall leader Luke Tuckwell as pre-race favourite Paul Seixas lost time due to a crash.
Del Toro timed his move to perfection on the final climb of the 133km stage from La Bridoire to Grand Colombier, passing Spaniard Juan Ayuso with just 1.5km to ride.
Ayuso had been the first to attack on the punishing Grand Colombier climb to the finish, with around 7km to ride after the remnants of the day’s breakaway were caught just before that final ascent.
But Del Toro, 22, kept him in his sights despite falling back a maximum of 25 seconds at one point, and when he made his surge for victory, Ayuso could not respond.
It was a timely return to form for Del Toro, who won the UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico earlier in the year before he crashed out of the Tour of the Basque Country in April.
“It’s just crazy to be in this position,” said Del Toro.
“It’s kind of hard for me to manage these long climbs, but I’m getting used to it and getting better with each race.
“I was not full of confidence, but I really wanted to try and take the win.”
His mood was in stark contrast to Ayuso’s. “I’m just disappointed because I went obviously too far out, too early, and I threw away the win,” moaned the 23-year-old according to AFP.
Teenage French prodigy Seixas lost 1min 21sec to Del Toro by the line but that was in itself a remarkable performance given his earlier crash with just under 100km to ride.
Seixas took his time to gingerly climb back onto his bike and then embarked on a 60km-long chase to rejoin the peloton, which at one point was 4min ahead of him.
“It’s really incredible that we closed that four minutes without help from anyone, without panicking,” said Julien Jurdie, one of two sporting directors at Seixas’s Decathlon CMA CDG team.
“Paul stayed very calm. With Luke (Rowe, the other sporting director) in the car, we’d never seen that before.”
He certainly fared much better than Briton Oscar Onley, who pulled out of the race in the morning after he had crashed into a ravine on Friday, eventually losing almost half an hour to his rivals for the overall victory.
Australian Tuckwell did enough to keep hold of the yellow and blue leader’s jersey for the final stage, giving up 2:33 to Del Toro.
Tuckwell had stuck to Seixas’s wheel on the final climb but started losing contact with about 5km to ride, after which he fought to limit his losses.
