Who is Isaac del Toro and where did he come from?

Isaac del Toro didn’t waste time making his first impression.

Last year, in just the second WorldTour race day of his career, the then-20-year-old Mexican racer made a move that drew comparisons to one of del Toro’s new teammates, who just happens to be, arguably, one of the greatest cyclists of all time.

“Pogačar-esque” is how commentator Robbie McEwan described the attack del Toro launched on the second stage of the 2024 Santos Tour Down Under, his first race as a WorldTour pro with UAE Team Emirates-XRG. He attacked late, with fewer than two kilometres remaining on the day’s 141.6-kilometre parcours, leaving a group of some of the world’s fastest sprinters in his wake. Four stages later, he climbed onto the podium, finishing the race in third overall and winning the young rider classification in the process.

Fast forward a year and some months, and a few decent results—fourth at Tirreno-Adriatico, seventh at Itzulia Basque Country, 13th at Milan-Sanremo, sixth at Worlds—and del Toro is standing on top of the cycling world. He captured the maglia rosa following a head-to-head with none other than Wout van Aert (Visma -Lease a bike) that culminated with a final sprint up the famed and feared ascent into Siena’s Piazza del Campo. In doing so, he became the first-ever Mexican to pull the pink jersey over his shoulders. He’s also the youngest rider in this century to lead Italy’s Grand Tour.

Given his strength in the mountains, many are saying the Giro d’Italia is del Toro’s race to lose.

But who is Isaac del Toro? And how did he not only make his way to the WorldTour, but onto one of the best teams in the sport? In an era when information is everywhere, readily available and easily Google-able, del Toro is a bit of an anomaly: a top-tier athlete we somehow know almost nothing about.

Surely, the lack of information about del Toro has much to do with his age and relative inexperience. If he keeps up the pace he’s currently on, we’ll no doubt know everything there is to know about the young all-rounder by this time next year. Hell, if he keeps up the pace he’s currently on, we might know everything there is to know about him by the end of this month.

At just 21 years old, del Toro is only in his second year as a WorldTour racer. And while he’s lined up for some of the biggest races on the calendar, he’s had little success of note. Of course, there are those aforementioned fourths, sixths, sevenths, and thirteenths. But those aren’t finishes that force journalists to chase stories.

What we don’t know about del Toro right now could fill volumes. But here’s what we do know.

Del Toro was born in Ensenada, Baja California, a port city on Mexico’s Pacific coast, to a pair of cycling-mad parents. Growing up, he was an active mountain, cross and road racer, eventually competing with the Mexican national team. In 2021, when he was 18, del Toro was racing in Europe for A.R. Monex Pro Cycling team, a then-new UCI Continental outfit made up exclusively of staff and riders from Mexico.

He spent the next two years learning his craft, lining up in smaller tetes like the 2.1-rated Sibiu Cycling Tour in Romania, Italy’s 1.2 Coppa della Pace, and France’s 2.2 Tour du Loir et Cher.

However, his breakthrough came in late summer of 2023, when, after three inauspicious stages at the Tour de l’Avenir, he rebounded in fantastic fashion, finishing second, ninth, first, third, second, and second again in the race’s remaining six stages. Del Toro’s performance was good enough to capture all four of the race’s classifications: the race winner, the points jersey, the best climber and best young rider titles.

The performance at l’Avenir was head-turning enough that del Toro was offered a contract with UAE Team Emirates, where he would team up with another former l’Avenir winner: Tadej Pogačar. The team was so confident in the young talent that they gave him a contract through the end of the 2029 season.

He wasted no time, netting the aforementioned result on just his second race day in the white and black livery of his new team. He spent the rest of the year rounding out his busiest schedule ever: 66 race days between January and September, during which he gave another sweeping performance at the UCI 2.1 Vuelta Asturias Julio Alvarez Mendo, where he took home the GC, points and young rider jersey.

He started his 2025 season off with a less busy schedule, finishing 19th at Tirreno-Adriactico, 13th at Milan-Sanremo, and an inauspicious 33rd at Strade Bianche.

He also won mid-March’s 1.Pro race Milano-Torino, the world’s oldest race, beating Visma Lease-a-Bike’s Ben Tulett by just one second at the summit finish.

But the knowledge gained during that 33rd-place finish at Strade Bianche might have proven more valuable than anyone could have guessed at the time. It was just a few weeks later, during the Giro d'Italia’s ninth stage, where del Toro made his biggest splash yet as a WorldTour racer.

It was on one of those same roads where del Toro and van Aert dropped the rest of the peloton, and battled through the lower roads of Siena, up its canyonesque streets and, eventually, into the colosseum of Piazza del Campo.

And though he couldn’t best van Aert on that day, his performance was enough to net him the pink jersey.

As of this writing, del Toro has yet to win a Grand Tour stage. If and when he does, he’ll join Raúl Alcalá and Julio Pérez Cuapio, his countrymen and native forebears, as the only Mexicans who’ve ever done as much (Alcalá is a two-time Tour de France stage winner, Cuapio won three Giro stages in his career). If he can keep hold onto the maglia rosa over the next nine stages, he’ll become the first-ever Mexican to win a Grand Tour.

But no matter what he does in the coming weeks, one thing is absolutely certain: Isaac del Toro won’t remain a mystery for much longer.