Paul Seixas is only 19, but he isn’t waiting for Tadej Pogacar to retire. He wants to beat the Slovenian on the road. And there is a feeling among the peloton that if anyone can do it, it will be the man from Lyon.
Whispers of Seixas’s talent were already circulating when he was 17. This is not unusual, especially for French riders, but last year, in his first season as a professional, he came third at the European championships behind only Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel, as well as becoming the youngest man to finish in the top ten of the Critérium du Dauphiné.
Then, last month, he took his first professional win on stage two of the Volta ao Algarve on the Alto da Fóia climb (16.4km at 4.9 per cent), sprinting for the line just ahead of Juan Ayuso of Lidl-Trek, João Almeida of UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Oscar Onley of Ineos Grenadiers. It has not gone unnoticed that this was the very same mountain on which Pogacar took his own first professional win in 2019.
“It’s perfect,” Seixas said after the race. “For the moment, the first goal is already achieved: win a race. And I won today, it’s so amazing.”
Again, this past weekend, Seixas, who rides for the French team Decathlon CMA CGM, lined up in Guilherand-Granges for the Faun-Ardèche Classic, attacked alone with 46km to go and won comfortably. He finished with his arms in the air 1min 48sec ahead of Pogacar’s team-mate Jan Christen. There can be no doubt that Seixas is special.
Now the gangly, curly-haired young man’s attention turns to Strade Bianche, where, on Saturday, he will line up at the Fortezza Medicea in Siena alongside Pogacar for the first time this season.
The Slovenian has won the Italian race three times, but Seixas hopes he can go toe-to-toe with Pogacar on the dusty white roads that roll among the green Tuscan hills.
Easy rider: Seixas finishes with his arms in the air as he comfortably wins the Faun-Ardèche Classic
BILLY CEUSTERS/GETTY IMAGES
“I did some cyclo-cross when I was younger and I still have technical skill, so on the gravel I can be really good,” Seixas told The Times. “It’s a race I’m really looking forward to, I’m really excited about it.”
To even stand a chance against the cyclist many consider the best in history, the sacrifices are substantial. During the winter, the teenager didn’t see his family or girlfriend for two months while he trained at altitude in the Sierra Nevada mountains in southern Spain.
“For a lot of people it’s difficult to understand what I feel now, but for me it’s special,” he says. “Cycling is my passion. It’s not something that I do for work, it’s something that I love and I love to improve and I love to train, I love to do some hard work, and that’s what makes the difference, I think.
“I know in the start of the season that I have to make this sacrifice and I already feel the improvement on the bike, and I know that sometimes you have to sacrifice some parts of the year to be better, but also to be happy in what I do, to feel strong and to know that I’m ready to race.”
Born in Lyon, Seixas wears the Ligue 1 club’s shirt with pride … and hopes to swap it for the Yellow Jersey one day
SYLVAIN THOMAS/FEP/ICON SPORT VIA GETTY IMAGES
In the era of Pogacar, nothing less than all-in will do. And while that has proven too much for some riders recently, with Giro d’Italia winner Simon Yates of Visma-Lease a Bike announcing his shock retirement in January, Seixas genuinely seems to enjoy it. He speaks with boyish enthusiasm. Asked about his step up in 2026 after his months away, Seixas replies: “I ride faster, I feel like I have more power.”
So far, all the evidence confirms his assessment. But there is something that looms over all French talents that grace this sport: the burden and expectation of a once-great cycling nation. For many years the role of France’s next great hope fell to Romain Bardet, who managed second place in 2016 and a King of the Mountains jersey in 2019 as well as four stages over his career — but no overall win. Now that Bardet, 35, has retired from road cycling, that expectation falls firmly to Seixas.
This is something he is well aware of. He discovered cycling when he was four or five watching the Tour de France on TV with his grandfather, who never missed a stage of the race. Seixas asked his parents if he could begin to race, but he was too young. By the time Seixas was eight, however, he had his licence and had watched enough of Bardet and Thibaut Pinot to know what he wanted to do, even if that meant bearing the same weight as those French riders did in La Grande Boucle. Incredibly, Bernard Hinault, successful in 1985, is the last home winner of the men’s Tour de France.
Wacky races: the dusty, gravel roads of Strade Bianche often throw up moments of carnage
MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
“Maybe there are some other guys who can feel this pressure,” Seixas says. “But for me, I know that if I’m strong in training, if I put everything into work to be the best as possible, in the end I have no regrets. But also I’m really young, so I have maybe less pressure than a guy that is 25, who needs to prove himself, so it’s different.
“But I really don’t feel the pressure. I just do my races, do my sport, love it, love the training, love everything, and then it’s going to go well.”
Seixas will also race at Liège–Bastogne–Liège this year, showing that like Pogacar, he is the sort of rider who wants to race the one-day classics. But for now he is keeping quiet about whether or not 2026 will see him line up at his first grand tour.
Even for one as precocious as Seixas a grand tour is a whole other matter, especially the Tour de France which is raced faster and harder than ever before. Perhaps he may make an appearance at La Vuelta before we see him fighting for yellow, but with his trajectory already defying expectations, who can say for certain that he won’t be in Barcelona for the first stage of the Tour this year? After all, he already looks like one of the best riders in the peloton.
Starting and finishing in Siena on Saturday, Seixas will face 201km, 64km of which is white gravel roads. He’ll have to fight against not only Pogacar but the 2023 winner Tom Pidcock of Pinarello-Q36.5 and the other young pretender to Pogacar’s crown, Isaac del Toro of UAE.
If he can make it over the dusty roads and up the hills and past the little towns and villages then the brutally steep Via Santa Caterina climb in Siena awaits before he can pass into the Piazza del Campo, where the winner will be crowned. It will be the first true test of the year for Seixas.
