{"id":649027,"date":"2026-05-04T12:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T12:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/649027\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T12:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T12:52:07","slug":"teenage-french-prodigy-paul-seixas-to-become-youngest-tour-de-france-cyclist-for-89-years-tour-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/649027\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenage French prodigy Paul Seixas to become youngest Tour de France cyclist for 89 years | Tour de France"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The cycling prodigy Paul Seixas will make his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/tourdefrance\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tour de France<\/a> debut this year, raising hopes of France\u2019s first male homegrown winner since 1985.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The 19-year-old Decathlon-CMA CGM rider has prompted intense debate in France after a dazzling start to 2026 with his team weighing the benefits of early exposure to the Tour against the risk of overburdening a rider still in his first season as a professional.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DX6MF9fsWDq\/?hl=en\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Seixas made the announcement<\/a> on his team\u2019s social media on Monday. \u201cI\u2019ve come here to announce to you something special, I have a race in July,\u201d he tells his grandparents, before they guess that he is talking about the Tour. He will be the youngest rider to start a Tour in 89 years when the Grand Boucle begins in Barcelona on 4 July.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">He won the Tour of the Basque Country in April, becoming the first Frenchman since Christophe Moreau at the 2007 Criterium du Dauphine to claim a WorldTour stage-race title.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The Lyon-born rider, who has said his biggest dream is to win the Tour de France, is already being seen as a potential answer to France\u2019s long wait for a first home victor since Bernard Hinault in 1985.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2025\/aug\/03\/pauline-ferrand-prevot-tour-de-france-femmes-title-cycling-2025\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">In 2025, Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot<\/a> became the first French rider to win the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/tour-de-france-femmes\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tour de France Femmes<\/a>, 36 years after her compatriot Jeannie Longo won the Tour de France F\u00e9minin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Team management had indicated that Seixas\u2019 programme would be assessed after the Ardennes classics, where he won the Fleche Wallonne before being beaten only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/apr\/26\/tadej-pogacar-wins-liege-bastogne-liege-paul-seixas-cycling\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">by world champion Tadej Pogacar in the Liege-Bastogne-Liege race<\/a>. It will be Seixas\u2019s first grand tour and the only time he has tackled a race longer than eight days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The 2026 Tour de France starts in Barcelona and finishes in Paris on 26 July.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cycling prodigy Paul Seixas will make his Tour de France debut this year, raising hopes of France\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-649027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}