‘It feels like a dream’: Seixas makes history as youngest winner of Il Lombardia

Paul Seixas won Il Lombardia at 20, the youngest winner in the race’s history, after going clear on the final climb and holding around 30 to 40 seconds to the finish in Como.

“It’s crazy. I don’t realise it for now,” Seixas said in his post-race interview. “Everything went perfect. The team made a great, awesome job. Everyone pushed more than what they had to do. I had amazing legs. I had the feeling that today was a great day.”

He went earlier than planned because the pace in the group was not hard enough to do the work for him.

“I managed to make the difference at the moment I chose. Maybe a bit earlier, because I felt the rhythm was not high enough at the start of the climb, for me at least, to make the difference. So I had to accelerate early, maybe a bit too early,” he said. “There were some not really steep parts, so I had to manage my efforts really well and accelerate in the hard parts. Then I did the best I could. Me against myself.”

The gaps he was given did not settle anything until the summit.

“Not really, honestly. I heard between 30 and 40 seconds, so it was a good gap. But not enough to think about the win before the end of the last climb,” he said. “I just had to not make mistakes on the downhill, so I was careful.”

It is his first Monument, in a season that brought fourth at the Tour de France at 11:56, second at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal and third in the World Championships time trial. He skipped the European Championships to prepare for this race, a decision Thomas Voeckler confirmed had been taken before Tadej Pogačar withdrew from the Vuelta.

Asked whether he had ever pictured this, Seixas said he had not.

“Not really, it was a dream. Today people made me dream, that’s for sure. Well, my legs made me dream today. I knew I’d have an opportunity. We’ve always got a few doubts, haven’t we, whoever we are. But I really trained hard, and it’s incredible.”