'He’s going to ruin my July': Paul Seixas’ grandparents caught between pride and fear before historic Tour de France debut

The first sign of what his selection meant came at his grandparents’ home.

When Decathlon CMA CGM confirmed in the spring that the 19-year-old would start the Tour, the team chose a setting rooted in family and memory rather than a standard line-up announcement. The video returned to the place where Seixas first discovered the bike, with his grandparents present as part of the story.

It was a lovely scene at the time. Now, with the Tour only weeks away, it feels even more telling. Seixas will be the one racing, but the people closest to him will go through those three weeks with him.

His maternal grandparents, Annie and Claude, have followed his progress from Fenestin, near Vannes in Morbihan. They have seen the excitement grow and the attention around him increase. To them, though, he is still just Paul.

“We are proud of him, moved, stunned and impressed all at once,” they told Le Telegramme.

If everything goes to plan, Seixas will roll out in Barcelona on 4 July as the youngest Tour de France starter in almost 90 years. His age alone would bring attention, but his spring has only added to it: wins at Itzulia Basque Country and La Flèche Wallonne, plus second places behind Tadej Pogačar at Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

In France, his debut will be one of the stories of July. The country has been waiting for another Tour winner since Bernard Hinault in 1985.

For his grandparents, all that attention comes with worry too.

Annie already knows how difficult that will be.

“I’m going to be ill for three weeks,” she said. “He’s going to ruin my month of July. When Paul races, I can’t stay in front of the television. I’m always afraid he’ll fall. I go for a walk in the forest or say hello to the neighbour, but I quickly come back home to see where he is.”

Claude handles it differently. He stays with the race, but not without feeling it. “I’m very stressed,” he said. “Sometimes I get chills.”

Their worries are not only about what might happen on the road, but also about what is already happening around him, and the pressure France seems ready to place on his shoulders.

“All this excitement around him scares us as well, but there’s nothing we can do about it,” Claude said.

There is something quietly painful in that admission. Success has not taken Seixas away from his family, but it has changed the way the world looks at him. The boy they watched grow into cycling is now being claimed by a public that wants a story, a future, perhaps even a saviour.

“It’s a bit too much,” Annie said. “Somewhere, we feel a little as if he is slipping away from us, but he remains our Paul, our little Paul.”