Unruly day at Dauphiné sets up blockbuster weekend in Seixas story

The Dauphiné may have been rebranded this year, but it remains a race prone to the same old wild deviations from the expected script. 

Certainly, nobody could have imagined that the flat, fast start to stage 6 would see a break of 60 riders go clear without a single representative from Seixas’ Decathlon CMA CGM team to boot.

Indeed, Decathlon were the only team not to get a rider in the move, and that meant they were doomed to spend the day leading the chase on behalf of their leader. Seixas heaped praise upon the efforts of Stefan Bissegger and Daan Hoole afterwards, but he surely would have hoped his team might have left him with a touch less to do in the finale.

Instead, the GC contenders still had more than four minutes to recoup on the break over the top of the penultimate ascent of the Côte d’Héry-sur-Ugine. On the shorter and steeper final climb to Crest-Voland, Seixas would throw himself onto the offensive, but he would still concede more than three minutes to the escapees by day’s end.

It leaves Seixas in seventh place overall, 3:06 behind the surprise new leader Luke Tuckwell, who helped his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate Maxim Van Gils to stage victory while helping himself to the yellow jersey.

Tuckwell has been quietly impressive in his debut pro season, taking sixth overall at the Tour de Romandie while riding in the service of Florian Lipowitz. The demanding final weekend of the Dauphiné is a whole other test, of course, and it remains to be seen if he can hang tough, but for now at least, the Australian’s hefty lead is an additional complication for Seixas to negotiate. 

Seixas had earmarked this first stage in the Alps as the beginning of his remontada at the Dauphiné after he surprisingly squandered seconds to some direct GC rivals on the opening stage and then shipped more ground in the team time trial at Perreux on stage 3.

The 19-year-old ultimately succeeded in clawing back seconds on all the pre-race favourites apart from Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) but perhaps not as many as he might have anticipated when, as Jorgenson put it, Decathlon went “nuclear” at the base of the final climb.

Only Del Toro and Jorgenson could follow Seixas’ long initial acceleration, while the Lidl-Trek duo of Juan Ayuso and Mattias Skjelmose battled to limit their losses a little further behind. And that pattern held more or less all the way to the finish.

Seixas’ forcing eventually saw off Jorgenson, but only because the American was mindful of the need to avoid going into the red. He swung off and followed his own pace on the upper reaches of the ascent, coming home just 13 seconds down.

Ayuso and Skjelmose could never get back on terms, but they weren’t blown away either, limiting the damage to 22 seconds. It was a more trying day for Netcompany-Ineos, as Oscar Onley’s challenge was ruined by a crash on the final descent, which cost him half an hour, while Kévin Vauquelin conceded 1:32 to his compatriot. 

In the overall standings, Seixas has nudged ahead of Ayuso, and he remains 16 seconds up on Del Toro, but he still has 32 seconds to recoup on Jorgenson, as well as that hefty gap to Tuckwell.

There is, of course, ample terrain ahead for Seixas to make up that ground, with an hors catégorie summit finish atop the Grand Colombier on Saturday followed by a wickedly tough leg to Plateau de Solaison on Sunday, where the Col du Pré, Montée de Bisanne and Col des Aravis precede the hors categorie haul to the line.

At the start on Friday morning, the consensus was that the finale of stage 6 was unlikely to provoke big gaps among the favourites, with Jorgenson acknowledging that the finale at Crest-Voland suited him far more than the steeper fare to come over the weekend. 

With all that in mind, the stage is still set for Seixas to stamp his authority on this Dauphiné and lay down a marker before that eagerly anticipated Tour de France debut next month, but there are some obstacles still to overcome, not least Tuckwell’s hefty advantage.

Del Toro, meanwhile, looked very comfortable indeed in following Seixas here, and the Mexican will not be cowed by the prospect of a head-to-head contest on the Grand Colombier and Plateau de Solaison. 

Amid the justifiable excitement over Seixas’ dramatic rise, Del Toro’s ongoing improvement – as evidenced by his victories at the UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico earlier this year – should not be underestimated. 

And after a subdued team time trial and the loss of Matthew Riccitello on the opening stage, there are question marks over the strength of Seixas’ supporting cast at Decathlon. He will argue that Bissegger and Hoole’s efforts saved the day here, but he knows, too, that his squad isn’t entirely suited to the terrain that awaits this weekend. 

“Now we’re really going to have to make the race hard,” Seixas said on Friday. “There are six of us left in the team, including two big rouleurs, so it’s a bit complicated, but we’re doing what we can. We’re really heading into something interesting.”

A blockbuster weekend in the Seixas story awaits.