'I knew it would be another dimension' - Paul Seixas gets first exposure to Planet Tour

At 19, Seixas is the youngest Tour participant since Adrien Cento in 1937, but that’s only part of the story. This is also the most eagerly awaited debut since Bernard Hinault raced – and won – his first Tour in 1978.

The key difference, of course, is that Hinault was already 23 years old and a Vuelta a España winner. Patience had been the byword for the Breton and his directeur sportif Cyrille Guimard, who was adamant that Hinault shouldn’t start the Tour until he was sure he could win it.

Seixas, by contrast, is setting out into the unknown here. He has never raced for more than eight days at a time, most recently at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, where a crash forced him to abandon early on the final stage.

Despite that inexperience, Seixas is placing no ceiling on his ambition over the next three weeks. Like every other race on the calendar, he lines up with the aim of vying for the best possible result.

“Of course, you always want to win, but it’s the Tour de France, it’s a new experience,” Seixas said, according to L’Équipe. “First of all, I have to gain some experience on the Tour before I can say that I want to win it. I’ve already won races, but this is different. I want to see my level of performance.”

There has been much debate as to whether Decathlon CMA CGM were correct to send Seixas to the Tour at such a young age, but now that he is here, the rider has no doubt about how he will approach the race. The aim, he explained, would be to stay as high up in the overall standings as he can. 

“The priority is still going for the general classification,” Seixas said. “In what position, I don’t know yet. We’ll see. But I won’t take risks for anything other than the general classification…”

Seixas downplayed the idea that he had any specific fears in his debut Tour, though he acknowledged that racing into a second and third week would present a different challenge to anything he has encountered to this point.

“It’s more about seeing how my recovery will be after 10 or 15 days, so it’s more questions than fears,” Seixas said. “If there are mistakes, or if there are moments when it is harder, they will teach me a lot for the future, so it’s more positive.”

So far in his career, Seixas has shown himself to be a quick learner, demonstrated, for instance, by the way he checked out of following Pogacar for too long on the Monte Sante Marie at Strade Bianche in March. He couched his crash on the penultimate stage of the rebranded Dauphiné was another lesson learned. 

“Of course it was linked to a mistake on my part, but I don’t really feel it was about impatience,” Seixas said. “I could have positioned myself on a descent like any other rider. I made a mistake, that is how it is, it happens.”

Seixas will aim to get off to a fast start in the 19km team time trial in Barcelona on Saturday, where he will hope his Decathlon CMA CGM squad can perform better than they did in the equivalent test at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

“I think we’ve got a really good, very solid team,” said Seixas. “We’ve made the initial adjustments and it’s gone very well. It’ll be a bit of a challenge with the very fast course and the last two hills at the end. We’ll see how we manage it.”

At one point, Seixas smiled as he observed the crowd that crammed into the press centre to hear his first thoughts as a Tour de France rider: “I knew the Tour would be another dimension – and now I have the proof.”