It would be easy to look at the April demonstrations of power from Paul Seixas at La Flèche Wallonne and Itzulia Basque Country and reason that cycling’s most prized teenager is already close to being the finished product.
The youngest-ever winner of the Belgian classic is evidently the real deal, but the Decathlon CMA CGM Team leader is only getting started. On Sunday he faces Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel, Tom Pidcock and other established starts at Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
“I think I can improve on everything … you’re never at the end of the game,” Seixas told The Athletic in February. The 19-year-old has proven himself to be a fast learner, but there are plenty more lessons for him to take on board and tweaks to make to his way of working.
If he can keep improving, on and off the bike, alongside natural development and experience taking care of the rest, he could grow into the rival who can usurp Pogačar.
Here, then, are six areas that Seixas is sharpening as he looks to become even better.
Using the Decathlon unit more intelligently
“He’s used to doing his own thing in the bunch,” team-mate Oliver Naesen told The Athletic at February’s Volta ao Algarve, where Seixas won a stage and finished second overall to Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek).
A lieutenant on the team for the likes of Romain Bardet and Felix Gall over the years, Naesen tells his captains to outsource responsibility for any crash or time loss to helpers: “For Paul, it’s not so much of a problem as for other climbing leaders. But over a multi-day race, you really can save a whole lot of energy by not giving a damn and just following your guys, knowing and trusting they will bring you safely to the line within the winner’s time.”
Shrewd, efficient racing day in, day out could make a crucial difference mentally and physically, especially if (or rather, when) Seixas wants to take on Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard in Grand Tours.
“That’s something he will have to learn: he sometimes finds his own way because he’s used to it from junior racing, he’s very agile in the peloton,” Naesen says. “He’s strong enough, but they [the WorldTour’s biggest GC stars] are all strong enough to do that.”
Seixas’ win at Itzulia Basque Country earlier this month was the first time a French male rider had won a WorldTour stage race since 2007 (Ander Gillenea / AFP via Getty Images)
Leadership lessons
Seixas is only 19 and as jaws drop and records fall with seemingly every passing race, the prodigy has leapfrogged the team hierarchy to the very top. Leadership as a teenager, dictating what he wants to peers some of who are almost double his age, is not straightforward, and time can only help.
That also goes for a team that is unaccustomed to defending WorldTour stage race leads and needs experience to excel at that.
His Decathlon CMA CGM team-mate Nicolas Prodhomme acknowledged that the team was “a bit too demanding” at Itzulia Basque Country, needing to accept certain riders breaking away so as to not frustrate other teams or riders, rather than chasing them down.
Food for thought
The second-year professional can still glean benefits from some professional cycling basics too.
“It starts with food: I was eating healthy, but not watching it so much,” Seixas told The Athletic two months ago. “I did more focus in the [winter] training camp, eating good things for my body really precisely.”
“I also started doing some breathing exercises to improve my capacity.” Seixas is also gaining muscle; last year, he added two kilos.
Is Seixas the rider set to depose Tadej Pogačar at the very top of the sport? (Marco Bertolrello / AFP via Getty Images)
Don’t set limits
Whatever the race, Tadej Pogačar is the yardstick for Seixas and the rest of the bunch, but the youngster is not afraid, still discovering what he can and cannot do.
“He has to get to know his own capabilities still by racing some of the best without setting himself a ceiling,” Oliver Naesen says.
Seixas finishing as runner-up at Strade Bianche was a promising sign in his first race of the season against the sport’s superstar; he will likely be the favourite for any race where the Slovenian is not present.
His team-mates are unsurprised by his level. “You see it in training. The other day we did a recon, and he’s just on 300 watts all the time,” Sander De Pestel (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) told The Athletic. “We were like, ‘Paul, woah, easy’. And he’s like, ‘oh’, not realizing how good he is. And I think that’s his strength too. He’s doing a lot of things right already, but I think he can still improve.”
Ignore the noise
Seixas would do well to stay off social media and avoid Googling his own name. It could be easy to be spooked by the sheer weight of opinions and immense expectations. Hype has turned to realistic hope that he could be French cycling’s messiah and the nation’s first man to win the Tour de France since 1985.
“I really need to stay calm because I guess there’s a lot of pressure on me. I take it as a positive effect, I manage it well,” Seixas told The Athletic in February. “Also, the people around me are very wise, which is important.”
The straight-talking, experienced Naesen advocates patience. “If I were him, I would try to be as natural as I can about progression. Nature and time will do their thing,” he says.
“One of the hardest things is coping with the environment: outside expectations, inside expectations even from yourself and the team — and trying to keep those aligned in some way.”
Naesen has also raced with Pogačar and Evenepoel when they were 20-year-old phenoms too. “I’ve seen with them, it sort of takes away the smile on their faces sometimes, that’s what we saw in the past. I hope Paul can be as free as long as possible.”
Seixas’s Decathlon team are yet to confirm whether the 19-year-old will make his Tour de France debut this summer (Ander Gillenea / AFP via Getty Images)
Controlling his destiny
Both the soon-to-be-announced decision about whether to take Seixas to the 2026 Tour de France and whether he will stay at Decathlon CMA CGM Team at the conclusion of his contract have become causes célèbres in the cycling world.
Team-mates and rivals’ opinions have been solicited and his team manager Dominique Serieys has suggested he is confident of extending Seixas’s deal. There has even been speculation that French president Emmanuel Macron has been on the phone, advocating for Seixas to stay on the French-registered team.
Speaking as a pundit on RMC recently, Groupama-FDJ United president Marc Madiot said: “Everyone says, ‘he has to do this, he should do that, he should do the Tour’. There is just one thing [we forget] — he is the one who decides what he will do and how we will do it … I’ve crossed paths with this kid two or three times, and I understood one thing: nobody will decide for him and nobody will impose anything on him.”
Seixas has the power. Whatever his race calendar turns out to be this season, he is in a dream scenario, able to dictate his terms with the WorldTour, and many suitors, at his feet.
