‘I would say 99 out of 100 teams would not do this’ - How Decathlon saved Paul Seixas’s race

The Frenchman hit the ground early and was left bruised, bleeding and several minutes behind the peloton. His hopes in the general classification were suddenly hanging by a thread. From the team car, Luke Rowe and Julien Jurdie had to make a quick decision.

They chose to commit.

“I would say 99 out of 100 leaders would have stopped the race,” Rowe said afterwards via the social media channels of the team. “And I would say 99 out of 100 teams would not have committed the whole team to bringing their leader back.”

For Rowe, that decision became the defining moment of the day.

Seixas was clearly in pain, but continued. Behind him, his teammates accepted their roles without hesitation. Some were sent back immediately, while others were kept further up the road so they could contribute later.

Stefan Bissegger and Dan Hoole were among the first riders asked to help. Their strength on the flatter roads gave Seixas a chance to begin reducing a deficit that had grown to around four minutes.

Further into the stage, the climbers took over.

Aurélien Paret Peintre had initially seen Seixas on the ground and feared his leader would not be able to continue. "When I saw the state he was in, I honestly thought he was not going to get back on the bike,” Paret Peintre said to L'Equipe.

Once Seixas had restarted, however, the focus shifted entirely to bringing him back into contention.

Paret Peintre later described the effort as one of the strongest collective performances the team had produced. “A lot of people had been criticising us,” he said. “But to come back from where we were, collectively, was impressive.”

The team’s response also carried extra weight because of the scrutiny it had faced earlier in the week. Questions had been raised about whether Decathlon CMA CGM had been able to support Seixas at the level expected around one of French cycling’s most highly rated young riders.

Rowe acknowledged that the pressure had been felt inside the team.

“A lot of this week has felt like we have been a bit of a punching bag,” he said. “Things have not gone as we planned. Sometimes learning is painful.”

The crash created the worst possible situation, but it also gave the team an opportunity to show what it was made of.

Léo Bisiaux later explained why the team had resisted the temptation to send everyone back immediately.

“We could not all drop back together, otherwise everyone would have been finished,” he told L'Equipe.

That decision allowed the team to maintain support deeper into the stage. Nicolas Prodhomme waited further ahead, while Bisiaux was still available for the final part of the chase.

From the car, Rowe watched the plan unfold.

“The guys came back at certain moments when they were told to and committed 100 per cent,” he said. “Julien and I were sitting in the car feeling pretty proud of the way the whole team rode.”

The chase did not completely repair the damage to Seixas’s general classification hopes. That was never realistic after such a heavy crash and such a large deficit.

But for Rowe, the result had become secondary.

“Whatever happened from the bottom of the climb onwards, it could only be a success,” he said.