Not just Paolo Bettini, met in the paddock and promptly relaunched on this excellent site. In our daily morning pastoral visit, the former world champion, former Olympian, former coach, former skinny guy, proves to be the leader of an oceanic movement. Champions and commentators, rival team managers and various mechanics, all contributing to the plebiscite: Del Toro is a pink jersey with numbered hours. Better yet: with numbered minutes, those he'll take in the last two stages around the Savoyard Kingdom, today five climbs to reach Champoluc, tomorrow four climbs with Finestre and a mountain top finish at Sestriere.

He should make peace with it, the Mexican kid: playtime is over, say goodbye to his pink jersey and prepare for the beatings. Some say Yates, some say Gee, but maximum votes go to Carapaz, effectively the most brilliant and bravest of the seasoned Villa Arzilla circle.

It's already written, in a triumph of granitic technical explanations. The young guy has already paid on San Valentino, let alone on the routes that await him. The skeptic says: but at Bormio... They'll eat his face: at Bormio he was saved only because the stage was short and explosive as he likes, and anyway if Carapaz had attacked just a bit earlier on the Mortirolo with the tuft he would have been caught.

Del Toro, let's get this over with, get ready: you with the pink jersey are like the white semester and like the contracts of poor delivery boys, temporary. The reasons, if he doesn't know them, I'll pass them on as I collected them in the paddock: he lacks endurance and stamina, he struggles on long climbs, he has no high-altitude experience, in other words, he's a nice guy who's been having fun at the expense of real riders, so seasoned and wise as to wait with glacial calm for the two true stages of this 2025 Giro, the Giro without dictators, the Open Giro, the Talent Giro. Let me tell you: they've tailored a perfect coat for him. The perfect outfit of a successful loser. He and his team should accept it: so far you've done as you pleased because they let you do it, because you were playing others' game, because it suited everyone. Now that the game gets tough, the tough start playing and he should sit in the soft corner. Gardaland closes here, please proceed to the exit.

What can I say: I record, transcribe and promptly report. Each should climb where eagles dare with their own convictions. In terms of predictions, this doesn't seem like the most reliable Giro: we all started from Albania certain of a Roglic-Ayuso duel, we know how that went. But anyway: since there's no Mago Otelma Prize for guessing the finale, I'd say we all take the best from this unexpected situation, which I would call curiosity. Let's go up in altitude with the curiosity to know if Del Toro is the one who has taken and surprised the Giro so far, or if he's the fleeting and ephemeral interim illusion announced by the experts.

While waiting to become learned, I'll just say this: if by any chance the written-off kid manages to escape the encirclement and the makumbe, it wouldn't be so bad. It would still be a 21-year-old winning the Giro a hundred years after Saronni (Beppe, come on, roughly speaking). For the de-championized Giro of 2025, it would be a great marketing move. The ideal spot. In its new Talent-show guise, our Giro needs more to discover talents than to resurrect old-timers.