It started as a 30-second joke on Instagram. Now it’s the unofficial anthem of the Paul Seixas hype train – and a surprisingly heartfelt plea to keep cycling’s next great rivalry alive.
If your algorithm is anything like mine, at some point in the past month you’ve probably come across the same video clip: a curly-haired troubadour in Oakley sunglasses and a polka dot t-shirt, plaintively fingerpicking on an acoustic guitar.
A delicate wandering melody follows, with lyrics addressed directly at the next Great French Hope:
Paul Seixas, you’re too good to just be Pogačar’s seixassor / Do you want to spend your winters riding zone 2 in the desert?
Do you want a Richard Mille watch, or a statue in my garden? / And could you let my sculptor know if you’d like stainless steel or marble?
And how lame would it have been if we had Jonas and Pogačar on the same team / And how cool to beat their ass on a Decathlon bike
You’re the next Hinault, the chosen one, but won’t someone think of me? / Paul Seixas, please don’t sign for UAE
In the weeks since, the Seixas hype train has only picked up speed. The 19 year old French rider won Flèche Wallone yesterday, finished second to Tadej Pogačar at Strade Bianche, cruised to the overall victory (and three stage wins) at Itzulia Basque Country, and anticipation is building for him to line up at the Tour de France. Meanwhile, there is speculation that he might be scooped up by the extravagantly wealthy UAE Team Emirates squad – a signing that would nullify what seems like it could turn into a tantalising rivalry.
Maybe it’s that background context, or maybe it’s the lilting melody of that song by the mononymic artist, Killow; either way, I’ve often had ‘Paul Seixas, please don’t sign for UAE’ looping around in my head.
Two days ago, Killow released the song, expanded out from one jokey verse to a full production, on streaming platforms. But that’s just the latest offering from the artist: on Spotify, there are 10 songs to his name, all funny, all themed around cycling, stretching as far back as 2022’s wonderfully-unhinged ‘Mieke Kroeger Anthem’ (122,000 listens at time of publication). Other songs include the downbeat ‘Eurosport and Cry’, the breakup ditty ‘Tenerife’, and upbeat odes to lazy summer afternoons watching the Tour de France.
With Killow’s latest song reaching his biggest audience yet, it felt like it was worth spending some time chatting to him about this song, his creative process, and why Paul Seixas should absolutely not sign for UAE.
Paul Seixas (left) was the meat in a UAE sandwich at Strade Bianche.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.
Iain Treloar: First up: the world knows you as Killow, or by your Instagram handle ‘Eurosport and Cry’. What is your name and where are you from?
Killow: My name is Killian, and I’m from Germany originally, but after graduating, I moved to Stockholm for an internship, and we sort of got stuck here. So this is where I work and live now.
IT: Whereabouts in Germany are you from?
K: This will be not that insightful for an international audience, I guess, but it’s a city called Trier with villages around it, and it’s the oldest city in Germany – very interesting. It’s sort of on the border with Luxembourg. So the closest main city, or something you would know, is probably Luxembourg or the French border.
IT: Is this an area that has a particular cycling culture? What’s your relationship with cycling?
K: I don’t think so, necessarily. I remember from when I was smaller, I always watched the Tour de France with my dad on television. My family [are] very big France fans, and I learned French in school, because we were in the area near the border. And so we went there on vacation, almost every year. And I remember we watched the Tour live two or three times while I was a child or a teenager, and I always found it very hard to find people my age to talk to about it – I was really hyped about cycling, but then no one else at school really got it; they were all into football. It was only later on, when I started making the music and stuff, that I found people on the internet that were my age, and that were also equally crazy about watching cycling and watching all the little races on the calendar, instead of just the Tour.
I am also a pretty passionate supporter of Decathlon (AG2R) since I started following cycling more closely, 15-ish years ago. I picked them because the jersey was cool, obviously, and I like underdogs. I guess it also helped that they didn’t change their name every other season back then.
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