Isaac Del Toro reached the top of Alpe d’Huez on Saturday with his podium secured and his face composed. Behind the sunglasses, he had been crying for much of the stage.

“If you could have seen through my glasses during the stage, you would have seen I was crying,” the 22-year-old said afterwards.

“I was speechless.”

Del Toro had spent the final week hiding how bad he really felt.

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A virus was tearing through his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad, and while Brandon McNulty had already abandoned and Tim Wellens and Adam Yates were also struggling, Del Toro kept insisting to the outside world he was fine.

“You try not to show that you’re weakening, and to pretend that everything is going well,” he said.

“But that’s not how it works.”

Pogačar pulling for him on the queen stage

The final Alpine stage should have taken his podium away.

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Paul Seixas, the young French climber sitting closest to him on GC, attacked repeatedly across the Télégraphe, the Galibier and the Sarenne, and on any other day a sick Del Toro might have cracked.

Instead, he had the yellow jersey riding on the front for him. Tadej Pogačar, already assured of overall victory, spent large stretches of the stage setting pace at the head of the peloton to protect his sick teammate. Del Toro attacked on the Col de la Sarenne, and Seixas lost 1:50 by the top.

“Tadej shows what it’s like to have him as a friend,” Del Toro said. “After the finish, I was in tears.”

A first for Mexico, 39 years after Alcalá

The 9:42 gap to Pogačar, and the place behind Remco Evenepoel, gives Mexico its first ever podium finish at the Tour de France.

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Del Toro also took the white jersey as the race’s best young rider, matching the white jersey Raúl Alcalá won in 1987.

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum posted a message on X the same evening. “Many congratulations to young Isaac del Toro,” she wrote.

“Mexico is very proud of your effort.”

Del Toro spent the week telling everyone he was fine. Only with the podium safely in his palmarès has the rider from Ensenada admitted what was really going on behind the sunglasses.

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