For Paul Seixas, the Dauphiné marks the end of the beginning

Paul Seixas should try to enjoy it, because things will never be quite like this again. The hype train has long since left the station, but there are differing levels of fame and attention in this game. And in French cycling specifically, there’s famous and then there’s Tour de France famous.

For now, the occasional front page of L’Équipe notwithstanding, Seixas’ renown is still confined almost exclusively to the narrow strictures of the cycling world. But once he lines up for his Tour debut next month, whatever the result, Seixas will inevitably become the property of a much wider public. 

His entire cycling life has been building to that moment, but it will be a shock to the system all the same, despite all the guardrails his Decathlon CMA CGM team have been carefully erecting around him.

The Critérium du Dauphiné – or the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, as ASO now insists we call it – is thus not simply his last race before Seixas’ Tour debut, it’s the final scene in the astonishing first act of his young career.

With Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard both absent, Seixas lines up as arguably the favourite to win the Dauphiné, despite his tender years and despite some very decent opposition in Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek) and Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).

Before Seixas exploded into the stratosphere, Ayuso and Del Toro were seen as the coming men of stage racing, and they have continued steadfastly on their paths this year. Injury and illness would later ruin his spring, but Ayuso beat Seixas to the Volta ao Algarve, while Del Toro, still only 22, has already won both the UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico this season. 

Yet despite that, both men have been eclipsed by Seixas’ dazzling rate of progress. Twelve months ago, Seixas was an impressive footnote to the Dauphiné, placing eighth overall in the shadow of Pogačar, Vingegaard and the Tour men. The 18-year-old was marked as one for the future, but that future has presented itself far more quickly than anyone could have imagined.

The signs were already there last autumn, when Seixas placed third at the European Championships, but the most remarkable phase of the Frenchman’s development has come over the last four months, where he seemed to show marked improvement with each passing week.

While Seixas’ casual dismantling of the Itzulia Basque Country field was his most striking victory of the spring, his head-to-head showings against Pogačar were the true barometer of his progress. 

At Strade Bianche in early March, Seixas elicited rave reviews for daring to follow the world champion’s winning attack for a few hundred metres before tapping out and placing second. By Liège-Bastogne-Liège in late April, Seixas able to match Pogačar on the Redoute and stick with him most of the way up La Roche-aux-Faucons. 

Seixas would place second at La Doyenne but that did nothing to dampen the hype. Quite the opposite. A week later, Decathlon confirmed the inevitable – Seixas would make his Tour debut at 19, the youngest participant since 1937. The rider condemned to do his growing up in public figured he might as well go big.

The rights and wrongs of the decision have already been discussed at length, and they will be debated all the way to July and beyond. Seixas, for his part, has simply gone about preparing for the Tour as any GC contender would, with a long training camp at Sierra Nevada. And he’s also gone about preparing for the big rendezvous as any excited teenager would, by bagging a Strava KOM on the Tourmalet. 

The most thrilling thing about Seixas at this point in his development is that he is both of these things at once. He approaches his sport with the carefully calibrated rigour of a hardened pro, and yet he still races with the spontaneity and lightness of a kid who can’t yet see his limits.

He dutifully lived the hermetic life on his altitude camp, logging some 48,000m of climbing across 16 days in Sierra Nevada, but then he went and produced that flex on the Tourmalet seemingly for the sheer fun of it. 

For many young and talented riders – young and talented French riders in particular – the first meeting with the Tour is very often the moment when the fun starts to ebb away a little. For the debutant, July is a dream. After that, it becomes a duty. Thibaut Pinot knew the plight. 

With that in mind, the Dauphiné marks the end of the beginning of Seixas’ career, and one imagines he will look to make the most of it. There will plenty poring over his watts/kg on the climbs and trying to extrapolate what it means for July, but the youngster will be keen simply to race and win in the here and now. 

Seixas being Seixas, he’ll likely make a fast start on the punchy terrain early on. He’ll aim to inspire his Decathlon squad in the team time trial. Above all, he’ll look to test himself against Del Toro, Ayuso et al on the brutal trio of mountain stages at the end of the week.

Seixas has nothing to lose here, and certainly less than Ayuso and Del Toro. In some respects, he might even have more to gain by losing, as it would deflate a little of the more hyperbolic expectations for the main event in July. 

Not that Seixas will allow himself to entertain such a thought. “On roads I know very well, those of my home region, I am going for the win,” he insisted.

And why not? Once Seixas rides the Tour, he will be forever burdened by expectation. But this week at the Dauphiné, he is still fuelled by the purest but most dizzying elixir of all: possibility. It promises to be quite a ride.