Seixas disappointed by Vingegaard and Pogacar absence from Tour de France dress rehearsal

The Decathlon CMA CGM rider, already one of the revelations of the 2026 season, lines up at the Dauphiné as one of the clear contenders for overall victory. Yet speaking ahead of Sunday’s start, Seixas made it clear that his focus is not only on the result. 

For him, this week is also about recovery, media attention, race management and learning how to live with the noise that will only grow louder when the Tour de France starts in Barcelona on July 4.

“The favourite, I don’t know. One of the favourites, yes,” Seixas said on a press conference in quotes collected by L’Équipe and DirectVélo. “There are some excellent riders on the start list. It’s one of the biggest stage races of the year, very prestigious, and even more special for me because it takes place in my home region.”

Seixas knows these roads well. He regularly trains in the region when staying with his parents, which gives the race an added personal dimension. The Dauphiné has long been the most important preparation races before the Tour de France. For Seixas, it now carries a double purpose.

“I knew the Dauphiné would give me a taste of what the Tour de France will be like from a media perspective,” he said. “Even though I still can’t imagine what it will be like at the Tour, people have already told me I’m going to be blown away. I’m preparing myself mentally, and it doesn’t bother me. It’s part of the game.”

His 2026 campaign has changed the conversation around him. He has won Itzulia Basque Country and La Flèche Wallonne, finished second behind Tadej Pogačar at Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and delivered one of the most striking moments of the spring when he followed Pogačar on La Redoute. 

The build-up has only added to the intrigue. Seixas recently came through a major altitude training block with several Decathlon teammates, with Strava files from that period pointing to roughly 1,500 kilometres and 37,000 metres of climbing across twelve days. 

Over the weekend, he then moved on to the Pyrenees to recon key sections of the upcoming Tour route, including the Col d’Aspin and Col du Tourmalet.

During that ride, he set a new benchmark on a 10.1-kilometre section of the western approach to the Col du Tourmalet from Luz-Saint-Sauveur, clocking 25 minutes and 25 seconds and beating the previous mark by 35 seconds.

Asked about the absence of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard at the Dauphiné, Seixas said he would have liked to test himself against both. “I would have liked them to be here,” he said. “I like racing against them, although I haven’t raced Jonas very often. Racing against the best is always a challenge and a chance to grow.”

He will meet them both at the Tour. Asked whether he had already dreamed of beating defending champion Pogačar, Seixas smiled but kept the answer grounded. “You can always dream,” he said. “But you have to stay realistic. I have a lot of respect for him and I remain humble. The same goes for Jonas, we must not forget him. They have occupied the first two places in the Tour for five years now. I am here to measure myself against them, but as long as I have not reached that level, I don’t want to fantasise too much.”

It was not the full Tourmalet climb, and training records are not Tour de France performances. But in the context of a French teenager already being spoken about as a future Tour contender, the message was hard to ignore.

Seixas himself is trying to keep the emphasis elsewhere. Asked what he wanted from the week, he joked that the first goal was “not finishing completely dead like last year,” when he placed eighth on his debut. Then he turned serious.

“I wouldn’t say I’m only focused on winning this race,” he said. “With the Tour in mind, the most important thing will be to see how much I’ve improved my ability to recover from one day to the next. This week there will be a route that is somewhat similar, all the media around it, the management with the team. It’s a bit of a rehearsal, and that’s really what interests me here.”

That rehearsal may be just as psychological as physical.

Luke Rowe, sports director at Decathlon CMA CGM, has seen Seixas up close in recent weeks, both at altitude camp and during Tour reconnaissance. Speaking earlier this week, he suggested the young Frenchman may not yet fully grasp the scale of what awaits him.

“I don’t think he quite still understands how big this Tour de France is,” Rowe said on his Watts Occuring podcast.

Rowe pointed to the long wait in France for a genuine home contender. Bernard Hinault remains the country’s last Tour de France winner, dating back to 1985. Since then, riders such as Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet have carried the dream, often with the weight of a nation on their shoulders.

“They just want to believe in someone who can do it,” Rowe said. “And with that comes a shedload of pressure.”

That pressure will not arrive only in July. It will already be visible this week at the Dauphiné, where Seixas starts against a field strong enough to test both his legs and his composure.

Isaac Del Toro, João Almeida, Juan Ayuso and Oscar Onley are among the names expected to shape the race. Some arrive with unfinished business after Seixas’ breakthrough spring, but the Frenchman is not treating this as a continuation of what happened in the Basque Country or the Ardennes.

“It’s good to have rivalries, to meet again with riders I beat at the Tour of the Basque Country,” he said. “But the slate is wiped clean. That’s also what I enjoy as a competitor.”

That makes the Dauphiné more than a form check. It is a first chance to see how Seixas responds when the climbing, the recovery and the attention all come together in race conditions.

The Tour de France is still a month away. But for France’s most exciting young rider in a generation, the rehearsal has already begun.