They put a chumma-chuggum on the front page of L’Équipe!
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Can you hear that? That thudding in the distance that’s gradually getting closer? It’s Tadej Pogačar, about to return to racing at Strade Bianche to stomp all over everyone’s dreams once again.
But listen even closer, and that slower, mechanical clunking is the Paul Seixas hype train reaching an ever-greater pace. All aboard! Le choo choo!
The hype train has officially left the station 🚂
The French feeling themselves again is a good thing for cycling. Anyone remember the 2019 Tour de France? Spiritually, we are still there.
Paul Seixas already turning promise into results this season has everyone excited. The 19-year-old will ride his first Strade Bianche this weekend and says it’s a parcours that suits him. Meanwhile, L’Équipe reports the likelihood of Seixas changing his race programme to ride a debut Tour de France is now a very real prospect.
The French newspaper also went with this front page on Wednesday, documenting the rise of French shipping giant CMA CGM’s foray into sports sponsorship. But really, without Seixas’ hype there’s surely no way this would have been on the front page. We reckon they just wanted to put a celebrating Seixas on a massive ship.
Just nobody mention the fact that CMA CGM are among the shipping companies most exposed to the trade route chaos of the Iran War. Only Seixas thoughts for the time being.
How to solve a problem like Pogačar 🤔
As Tadej Pogačar prepares to make his 2026 season debut at Strade Bianche, the peloton appears numb to his dominance, which isn’t the worst strategy.
“We shouldn’t complain,” Tom Pidcock’s coach Kurt Bogaerts told Wielerflits. “It’s only good for the sport that Pogačar is interested in a wide range of races. Honestly, I like that.”
The determined boys of Wielerflits had decided their remit for the week was making everyone dwell on Pogačar, also asking Tudor’s Julian Alaphilippe about the Slovenian.
“To be honest and realistic: we don’t really think about that,” Alaphilippe added to the Dutch publication, while former pro Erik Dekker told the Alpecin barbershop chair his opinion of our current era of dominance: “I personally find the beauty greater than the lack of tension.” Each to their own, we guess.
One place we can find tension (figurative, not literal) instead of beauty when it comes to Tadej Pogačar is in the way he tied the laces of the trainers/sneakers he was wearing as he unveiled the Strade Bianche sector that has been named after him.
“Is this a Gen Z thing?” Mike on Discord wondered. Or so box fresh (and maybe sponsor correct?) that he had to quickly slip them on for the photo? We’re hoping it’s one of those two answers, because this is an absolutely deranged way to wear footwear.
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