When Paul Seixas rode away from Matteo Jorgenson 40 kilometers from the finish of this past weekend’s Faun-Ardeche Classic, he was taking a casual drink. The 19-year-old Frenchman had just shattered a small group wending up the Col de Saint Romain de Lerps, forcing a pace only Jorgenson could match, and he was regrouping when he took a drink and noticed the American flagging. So he put his head down and went, not to be seen again until the finish line. If Seixas’s riding didn’t draw obvious enough comparisons to frequent Jorgenson-dispatcher Tadej Pogacar, the terrain made them unavoidable: Seixas zoomed up the climb in 16:18, tying Pogacar’s climb-record time from the 2025 European Championships. Not a bad way to take your second professional win.
Seixas’s talent is undeniable. He spent his brief junior career dominating those in his age group, setting the stage for a spectacular neo-pro season in which he was the youngest rider at the WorldTour level. Seixas raised eyebrows at his first pro race when he put down a huge performance at last February’s GP Grand Prix La Marseillaise, and he was all set for a big spring until he crashed out of the UAE Tour. He recovered in time to have a great Tour of the Alps in April, finishing 1-2 with teammate Nicholas Prodhomme and defying team orders to take the win for himself, before truly hitting the world stage at the Criterium du Dauphine. In the traditional Tour de France tuneup’s most competitive edition in years, Seixas finished eighth.
This was not the most important result in the race—that’d be Pogacar wobbling in the time trial then recovering to disembowel Jonas Vingegaard—but it was the most discussed. Neither teenagers nor French guys do stuff like that, yet here was Seixas, testing himself against the best riders in the sport and passing with flying colors. It could only have been a more exciting ride if Seixas had won a stage, though his talent was so obvious that he didn’t really need to. For cycling fans grown accustomed to Pogacar winning so often and from so far out that he has come to personify the concept of anticlimax, the approach of any potential new challenger was always going to be welcome news. Pogacar still gets in plenty of good, exciting races, though rarely on his terrain, which was where Seixas showed such promise.
For French fans, Seixas’s arrival has been greeted with messianic fervor. They have been waiting for a French rider to win the Tour de France for more than 40 years. The intervening period has thrown up all manner of contenders—Thibaut Pinot! Richard Virenque! Romain Bardet!—yet none have posed a serious threat in a while, and even Jean-Christophe Peraud’s second place in 2014 is universally recognized as rather Michel Souris. The contradiction between the outsized prominence of the Tour de France within the sport and the disappointing performances of the home nation for so long has produced a strain, putting each potential Great French Hope under immense pressure the second they secure an interesting result. “We’ve already had some French junior world champions and afterwards: pfft….” Seixas’s Decathlon directeur sportif Julien Jurdie recently told the Athletic.
So, yes, while the hype will be there even if there was great risk of pfft-ing, Seixas is the first French rider in a while who actually deserves it. After his big Dauphine result, everyone was clamoring for him to go to the Tour, though Decathlon wisely had him stick to his original schedule. The Tour de France is no place for a child in their first season, even one as precocious as Seixas. Riding against the best in the world every day for three weeks while the world’s attention is fixed on you demands a totally different level of fitness and focus. Seixas was a great climber last summer, yes, but his body was not up to the grind. Still, the French knew how great he was. Decathlon was constantly being asked about Seixas at the Tour last year; when my France-mate Joshua Robinson of the Wall Street Journal did his How does anyone beat Tadej Pogacar? story last year, he had to go ask Decathlon about Seixas. They defended their correct decision not to alter Seixas’s racing calendar, while hinting that he would probably race in 2026.
Everything that’s happened since the 2025 Tour has now made the prospect of Seixas debuting this year more likely. He won two stages and the overall at the Tour de l’Avenir in August, went attack-for-attack with Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel at the European Championships in October en route to the podium, then finished seventh at Il Lombardia, becoming in the process the youngest rider to place in the top 10 at a monument in over a century. Seixas clearly had a strong winter. “I think I can improve on everything,” Seixas told the Athletic. “But I have a few points in particular. It starts with food: I was eating healthy but not watching it so much. Now, I did more focus in the training camp, eating good things for my body really precisely.”
In other words, he is accepting the totalizing, monastic lifestyle of the best riders in the world. Seixas also said he packed on some muscle and has been doing breathing exercises, some more of the little, essential things for a rider this good. He has his own press attaché, though he comes off in profiles as someone totally assured of his talent and welcoming of the pressure. “I’m never afraid,” he said to the Athletic. “Because if you are afraid, then you have already lost.”
In that same story, his coaches casually say stuff like, “Everyone understands that Paul will surely become a great champion cyclist if he does not have any problems.” That strikes me as a great attitude to have about shouldering cycling’s heaviest burden. Why not own it, especially if you’re this good?
As if the echo of Tadej Pogacar couldn’t already be heard reverberating off Seixas’s Faun-Ardeche win, I have to note that Seixas took his first pro win days earlier in Portugal, smoking Juan Ayuso to take Stage 2 of the Volta ao Algarve. Seixas won that stage on the Alto da Fóia. That’s the same climb where Pogacar took his first pro win seven years ago.
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