While the tactics were bad, I think they were bad for different reasons than everyone is saying.
For starters, on the podcasts I’ve been listening to they have been expecting Del Toro to lose the jersey today for the past 2 weeks. It shifted slightly from “it’s inevitable he’ll lose it today” to “he’ll most likely lose it today unless UAE has perfect tactics” after some of his recent performances.
UAE knew this too, which is why they kept riding for Ayuso until his knee imploded. Del Toro weighs 8kg more than Carapaz and Yates, has never proven consistency in a 3 week race, and to boot he’s been burning matches consistently throughout the last 3 weeks to gain seconds when anyone could look at the profile and see that today could be decided by minutes.
The real stupidity in UAE’s tactics is the reason I dislike them as a team: the majority of their team is just gobbling up every potential GC leader with oil money then going into every race with 4+ people riding for their own GC due to their egos. While I like McNulty, him riding for GC in this race was pure idiocy. He should have purposely lost time, saved his strength and gone into the break today as a satellite rider so he could do the same for Del Toro as Wout did for Yates. That, plus the reckless expenditure of energy due to the inexperience and enthusiasm of youth is where the race was truly lost, not the staring match with Carapaz.