Kooij's win does nothing to lighten Seixas' load at Tour de France

Approached by RMC Radio at the finish in Pau on Wednesday, Decathlon CMA CGM manager Dominique Serieys couldn’t resist reaching for an ‘I told you so.’ The decision to bring sprinter Olav Kooij to the Tour de France had raised some eyebrows in France given the aspirations of Paul Seixas, but now the Dutchman’s victory on stage 5 seemed to justify the decision. 

“It’s easy to criticise the strategy. We’ll see how it plays out on the Champs-Élysées; the Tour is still a long way from over,” said Serieys.

He will be all the more relieved given the hefty investment his team made last winter to sign Kooij from Visma | Lease a Bike, a transfer splash that began to look questionable when a virus prevented the Dutchman from racing until May.

“It’s very clear that he’s a great champion. The reason we signed him and have faith in him is that we spotted his potential,” Serieys said of Kooij. “You can see he’s an exceptional young man.”

But while Kooij’s victory will undoubtedly have lifted some of the pressure on Serieys’ shoulders, it won’t have done anything to lighten the expectation that has been heaped upon the other exceptional young man in his line-up. 

In France, regardless of how it ultimately plays out, Seixas is the main attraction at this Tour, and his every move and every utterance will generate headlines from here to Paris. The France that tunes into the Tour in July in the same way that British interest in tennis revolves around Wimbledon will be unmoved by Kooij’s stage win. The narrative here is centred entirely around Seixas, the young man charged with ending the home drought that has endured since 1985.

That much was evident in the build-up to the Tour, where Seixas’ renown was already beginning to extend well beyond the small world of professional cycling. Last week, Paris Match, more accustomed to delving into the lives of public figures from Emmanuel Macron to Charlotte Gainsbourg, breathlessly trumpeted an ‘exclusif’ with… Seixas’ grandfather. 

No angle in the Seixas Cinematic Universe is too niche to be covered. Things even got quite meta on Tuesday, when Cyclismactu carried a lengthy interview with the English journalist Daniel Friebe on a series he is compiling about Seixas for the Cycling Podcast – which is itself centred on the coverage and expectation being piled upon the 19-year-old this July.

In the finale of stage 5, meanwhile, when all the general classification contenders were caught behind a split triggered by a crash with a shade over 5km to go, the host broadcaster didn’t overthink how best to label the chasers. Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard be damned, they knew that casual viewers in France would want to be kept abreast of the status of the ‘Groupe Seixas.’ 

The teenager duly saved the day, coming home alongside Pogacar to remain 10th overall, 8:41 behind yellow jersey Torstein Traeen (Uno-X Mobility) and 49 seconds down on the world champion.

Seixas’ duties on Wednesday didn’t finish when he crossed the line, however. On the dullest stage of the Tour so far – at least until that fraught final 5km – it was telling that France Télévisions’ coverage kept reminding viewers that Seixas would be the special guest on its Vélo Club post-stage analysis show, with presenter Laurent Luyat repeatedly stressing that the star man would be on the programme “for 10 minutes.”

Seixas was as good as his word, arriving at the makeshift studio to discuss his Tour so far with Luyat, Marion Rousse, Thomas Voeckler, Laurent Jalabert and Yoann Offredo for precisely the 10 minutes that Decathlon had clearly promised them beforehand. 

If the pressures of the Tour are weighing on Seixas, it certainly wasn’t apparent from his relaxed and amiable demeanour here. Remco Evenepoel aside, it’s difficult to think of another 19-year-old rider who has looked so utterly at ease amid the glare of the spotlight. 

The freewheeling conversation took in Seixas’ first impressions of the Tour and his rationale for riding it at such a precocious age. He also touched upon his relationship with Pogacar and Vingegaard, the men who have dominated the Tour throughout his teenage years. “I’ve had a few words with those lads, but I wouldn’t say we’ve got any real connection,” he said.

Most strikingly, Seixas dealt nimbly with the thorny question of his future. His contract with Decathlon expires at the end of 2027, and barely a day passes without another WorldTour team entering the Seixas sweepstakes. He smilingly stressed that he was still under contract for next year.

“There are quite a lot of things I have heard about that are false,” Seixas said, though he had the good sense to temper his words when asked to give a specific example. 

“I won’t say. In any case, there are no things that are really true or things that are really false, but there is a lot of information that, when I saw it, made me think: ‘Really? What is that?’”

Nothing, it seems, is any problem for Seixas, but he knows bigger tests are coming, starting with the race’s return to the Pyrenees on Thursday. The Tour already grazed the mountains on the passage from Spain into France earlier in the week, but the first true climbs come on stage 6 to Gavarnie-Gèdre, which takes in the hors categorie Col du Tourmalet.

Seixas nabbed a Strava KOM there during a recon ride in May, but the giant of the Pyrenees is a very different kind of test in the white heat of July. The Lyon native has impressed on punchy fare this year, most notably at Itzulia Basque Country and the Ardennes Classics, and he limited his losses on Pogacar to a clutch of seconds on the explosive finales at Montjuïc and Les Angles earlier this week.

Thursday, however, offers the most robust examination of his Tour credentials so far, with Pogacar and Vingegaard both expected to seek to lay down early markers. Seixas is at least as big a media draw as both men on this Tour, but it remains to be seen if he can live with them on the bike in that rarefied atmosphere. 

“I really enjoyed the recons, and I can’t wait for tomorrow,” Seixas smiled, and he offered up a familiar refrain when Jalabert asked him what would constitute a successful Tour.

“A successful Tour would be one where I can be in the GC right to the end. First of all, I just want to finish it and see how my body holds up over the course of these three weeks. As for the result, I haven’t set myself any specific target.”

Seixas left the makeshift studio to enthusiastic cheers from the fans who had gathered to watch the broadcast, and he probably won’t travel more than five metres this entire month without hearing an “Allez Paul” or seeing an outstretched mobile phone.

In that light, a Kooij stage win was never going to relieve the pressure on Seixas at this Tour. But so far, he has been carrying all that expectation with remarkable lightness. Whatever happens in the next episode over the Tourmalet, that calm in the face of fervour will take him a long way.