With March still a week away, UAE Team Emirates has already shown that it is very hungry to dominate 2026.
Mexican Isaac Del Toro took his first WorldTour overall victory, and he did it in style.
At the UAE Tour, the young Mexican took two stages and sealed the GC. Del Toro showed incredible punch on the queen stage, dropping overall leader Antonio Tiberi.
According to Sporza, Del Toro’s performance underlined the flying start of UAE Team Emirates to 2026.
Already racking up all kinds of wins
It was the fourth overall win in eight editions of UAE’s home race. More importantly, it pushed their season tally to 15 victories and we are still in February! Del Toro’s late-2025 Mexican national titles technically count toward this year’s total, further padding the numbers.
2025 was already a beyond impressive season for UAE Team Emirates—95 wins, smashing the previous benchmark of 85 set by Columbia-HTC.
UAE’s manager Joxean Fernández “Matxín” doesn’t really care about breaking records, however. “100 is just a number,” he said. “It’s important for me to win more than last year. And preferably with one more rider.”
In 2025, UAE’s 95 victories were shared among 20 different riders, which shows an impressive amount of depth and balance in the team. “We want to give everyone their chances,” Matxín stressed. “We have strong leaders, but we won last year with 20 different riders. Why shouldn’t we go for 21 this year?”
And as if 15 victories weren’t ominous enough, one key figure has yet to start his campaign: Tadej Pogačar.
If this is “just the beginning,” then boy oh boy, what a year we are in for.
The world champion is set to start his season at Strade Bianche. And judging from recent training rides, Pogi looks poised to wreck even more legs this year. One rider who has made beating the Slovenian a major goal is Red Bull–BORA-hansgrohe’s new recruit, Remco Evenepoel. In the off-season he made it clear that his new coach was going to help him bridge the gap between the seemingly unbeatable Pogi.
The Belgian had a fantastic start to the year, taking a whole bunch of wins. Although he did falter on Stage 3 of the UAE Tour, his earlier results show that we may have a ballgame at the Tour de France between Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard and Evenepoel.