all-time great Tadej Pogacar<\/a> close in the Liege-Bastogne-Liege Monument one-day classic a week ago.<\/p>\nSeixas has ridden two week-long stage races and four one-day classics this season, and has not finished below second.<\/p>\n
He insisted that he is not planning to ride the Tour just to gain experience. \u201cMy results since the start of the season have given me a lot of confidence \u2014 I feel ready and I will have ambitious objectives,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
He will be the youngest rider to start a Tour in 89 years when the Grand Boucle begins in Barcelona on July 4.<\/p>\n
In a video posted to social media by Decathlon, he is shown visiting his grandparents in the eastern Haut-Savoie region near his home in Lyon.<\/p>\n
\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.<\/p>\n
Seixas\u2019s potential participation in the sport\u2019s most prestigious race has been the subject of much speculation, which has only intensified with his performances.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has had a remarkable start to the season and is already one of the best riders in the world,\u201d his team boss Dominique Serieys said.<\/p>\n
Many experts believe it is too soon for Seixas to tackle the 3,333-kilometre (2,069 mile), three-week race, which includes eight mountain stages, including five summit finishes.<\/p>\n
It will be his first grand tour and the first time he has tackled a race longer than eight days.<\/p>\n
But he has excelled in every other challenge put before him this season. \u201cIf he\u2019s not ready, then who is ready?\u201d his Belgian team-mate Oliver Naesen told Cyclingnews last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s 100 percent ready to go to the Tour.\u201d But Marc Madiot, the sporting director of rival French team Groupama-FDJ United, believes it would be unwise for the young star to compete so soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe underestimate what the Tour de France is,\u201d he told RMC radio station on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you ride the Tour de France… you enter into a washing machine which wears you down, which devours you day after day,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
And in four-time winner Pogacar, Seixas will be up against \u201csomeone who destroys his rivals mentally one after another, even his own teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seixas\u2019s second season as a professional has been astonishing. He began by finishing second in the Tour of the Algarve before winning the Ardeche Classic.<\/p>\n
He was second to Pogacar at Strade Bianche, won the Tour of the Basque Country and then Fleche Wallonne, before finishing second in Liege.<\/p>\n
He also won one stage at the Tour of the Algarve and three in the Basque Country.<\/p>\n
At World Tour level he has won both a one-day classic and a stage race already. World champion Pogacar was 20 before he won a World Tour stage race and 22 before he won a one-day classic at that level.<\/p>\n
Seixas is even ahead of Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel, who won a World Tour one-day classic at 19 but did not win a stage race at that level until the following year.<\/p>\n
Pogacar finished third in his first Grand Tour, the 2019 Vuelta a Espana, but won the Tour de France at the first attempt the following year.<\/p>\n
Evenepoel failed to finish his first Grand Tour, the 2021 Giro d\u2019Italia, but like Pogacar, won his second, the 2022 Vuelta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French teenage prodigy Paul Seixas announced on Monday that he will ride the Tour de France in July…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[2620,64,63,937,314679,208288,61785,314680,784,314684,111733,314685,59980,314678,314682,314681,182181,314676,176605,12022,8396,85,314683,17391,314677,87670],"class_list":["post-650457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-agence-france-presse","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barcelona","tag-belgian-team-mate","tag-bernard-hinault","tag-childhood-dream","tag-cma-cgm-sa","tag-cycling","tag-dominique-serieys","tag-four-time-winner","tag-french-starlet","tag-french-team","tag-french-teenage-prodigy","tag-grand-tour","tag-home-winner","tag-marc-madiot","tag-mountain-stages","tag-paul-seixas","tag-province-of-barcelona","tag-remco-evenepoel","tag-sports","tag-stage-race","tag-washing-machine","tag-week-long-stage-races","tag-young-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650457","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=650457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}