“Everywhere I went people said: ‘That’s the girlfriend of the pink jersey’” – Now Isaac Del Toro’s partner is writing her own story in the peloton

Romina Hinojosa knows exactly how people have been introducing her since the Giro d'Italia in 2025. Not by her results, not by her team, not even by her nationality. By the pink jersey her boyfriend Isaac Del Toro wore for a chunk of that race.

The attention was real, and she does not pretend otherwise. But the point now is what comes next, because Del Toro did not win that Giro d'Italia, and she is not planning to spend another season living inside someone else’s headline.

Hinojosa is 23, rides for Lotto-Intermarche Ladies, and she is trying to become something far more useful to her team than a passing label.

Speaking to Sporza, Hinojosa described the Giro d'Italia experience as something she would not have missed. “Because I wouldn’t have missed that moment for the world. It was an unbelievable experience,” she said.

Back home, reality returned quickly. She is not building a career off a week of proximity. She is building it off a clear sense of what kind of rider she wants to be, and a willingness to challenge the assumptions around her. “Last year the team thought I was a mountain goat. But I knew I wasn’t a pure climber, even though I ride well uphill,” she said. The response from Lotto was not to argue, but to test her somewhere that reveals the truth fast: the cobbles.

Hinojosa says the switch surprised people internally. “The team was surprised that I held my own so well in the chaos of the Flemish races. That’s why they decided to put me in more cobbled classics,” she said.

Her season plan reflects that change. “I start my season at Omloop followed by the other cobbled races, the Ardennes classics and the Vuelta,” she said. It reads like a rider trying to expand her limits, not protect them.

The relationship at the centre of this story did not begin with grand gestures. It began with a hotel, a shared Mexico set up, and a race that mattered to both of them. “It all happened in the Tour de l’Avenir of 2023. Isaac won that race and I rode the edition with the women,” Hinojosa said.

At first there was nothing more than glances. Then her friends got involved, and she tried to turn the teasing back on them. “As a reaction I wrote a love letter for the joke,” she said.

The plan was simple. It was not meant to reach him. It did anyway. “It wasn’t the intention that Isaac would get his hands on that letter. But through a friend it happened anyway,” she said.

Hinojosa describes what happened next as a long conversation that started with cycling rather than romance. “I asked Isaac advice about my cycling future. On his advice I accepted Lotto’s offer,” she said.

That detail matters here because it keeps the balance right. Del Toro is part of her story, but not the whole story. She is making decisions, taking risks, and trying to grow.

There is one Giro d'Italia moment she cannot avoid talking about, because it shaped how she saw Del Toro, and how she thinks about setbacks in general.

She watched him lose the pink jersey on the Finestre to Simon Yates. She knows that climb herself. “I had already climbed the Finestre once, when I was in the breakaway of the Tour de l’Avenir,” she said, adding: “It was also because of that performance that Lotto offered me a contract two years ago.”

Her expectation afterwards was silence. “I thought that Isaac after losing the Giro would not want to talk for hours. That’s how he always reacted in the past when things did not go the way he wanted,” she said.

What she got was something else. “But after that Giro stage Isaac behaved very maturely and he could put it into perspective. That surprised me a lot,” she said. “He realises that he is still young and that there are still beautiful years ahead of him.”

It is a useful lens for her too. The label that followed her around last spring might open doors, but it will not carry her through Omloop, or across the cobbles, or into the Ardennes. Only her riding will do that. Hinojosa’s long-term dream is ambitious and neatly symmetrical. “My ultimate dream? Riding around in the rainbow jersey together with Isaac. That would be fantastic,” she said.

For now, she is chasing something more immediate. Not a nickname, not a storyline, not a borrowed spotlight. Just her own name, in her own races, on her own terms.