{"id":693699,"date":"2026-05-25T14:51:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T14:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/693699\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T14:51:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T14:51:16","slug":"he-has-the-whole-package-paul-seixas-prepares-to-rewrite-tour-de-france-history-at-just-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/693699\/","title":{"rendered":"“He has the whole package”: Paul Seixas prepares to rewrite Tour de France history at just 19"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Stephen Barrett, Head of Performance at Decathlon, has watched the young Frenchman hit milestone after milestone over the last few seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve known about him in the team now for the last few years,\u201d Barrett told Velo<\/a>. \u201cHe was with our U19 team, he was with our Conti team, and he moved up the WorldTour last year. He\u2019s an exceptional talent, but he\u2019s also an exceptional bike rider, and also a really just good guy who wants to learn, who wants to progress, who asks questions. He is eager to just absorb as much as he can. He comes from a cyclocross background, so he doesn\u2019t have a huge amount of training volume, and that\u2019s now where we see he\u2019s making big steps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that Seixas is adapting to elite-level training loads, his progression has skyrocketed. \u201cHe\u2019s starting to train more like a WorldTour rider,\u201d Barrett added. \u201cHe\u2019s increasing volume, he\u2019s increasing intensity… He still has a big margin for improvement. We\u2019ll see where that brings him in the next few weeks, months, and years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seixas’s racing CV over the last year is staggering for a teenager. At just 18, he secured eighth overall at the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9, won the Tour de l\u2019Avenir, and shared a European Championship podium with Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel<\/a>. This season, he followed up a second-place finish at the Volta ao Algarve by destroying the field at the Itzulia Basque Country, winning three stages and taking the overall title by 2:30 over Florian Lipowitz.<\/p>\n

According to Barrett, the metrics behind these performances point to a genetically blessed athlete who possesses a massive VO2 Max and rare late-race durability.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlready at such a young age, he\u2019s extremely durable,” Barrett explained. “He\u2019s got a massive resistance to fatigue. We often see that develop with the more experience you have, and the older you get, but he has that already… Even in Li\u00e8ge, he was producing his best numbers on La Redoute, which this year was a heavy, heavy high kilojoule race.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the ability to climb with the world’s best, time trial effectively, and descend flawlessly, Barrett admits the young Frenchman possesses the complete skillset. \u201cHe has the whole package. He can descend, he can time trial, he can climb. So it\u2019s exciting working with him and seeing him develop and improve in the team.”<\/p>\n

Managing the ultimate French Grand Tour gamble<\/p>\n

Sending a 19-year-old French rider to the Tour de France with a French team is a massive psychological risk. France hasn’t seen a home Tour winner since Bernard Hinault in 1985, and the immense pressure of the media has crushed plenty of young prospects before they even reached their prime.<\/p>\n

Barrett admitted that the decision to throw Seixas into the deepest part of the cycling pool wasn’t made lightly, with original plans pointing toward a more conservative debut at the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, it was a big discussion point within the team if it was the right thing to do, or not,” Barrett revealed. “If you\u2019re good enough, you\u2019re old enough. I think originally we thought that he might do a different Grand Tour, he might do a Vuelta. But when you see his progression, I think it would be remiss of us not to expose him to this type of race.”<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the team believes that the experience of racing the Tour will only fast-track his development, regardless of the final result in July.<\/p>\n

“We know he\u2019s physically capable of doing it, we know what he can do, it is only going to make him better. The decision didn\u2019t come lightly. It was discussed a lot between a lot of different people. Either way, he will learn something about himself and about what he needs to do to improve as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stephen Barrett, Head of Performance at Decathlon, has watched the young Frenchman hit milestone after milestone over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,257009,176605,85,6494,2845],"class_list":["post-693699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-liege-bastogne-liege","tag-paul-seixas","tag-sports","tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-tour-de-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693699","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=693699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}