What we learned from Tuesday’s first road stage of the 65th Itzulia Basque Country is that Paul Seixas in the real deal, as the French teenager dominated to triumph for the second day in a row. The Decathlon-CMA-CGA rider followed up his time trial victory with a win in Cuevas de Mendukilo and now has a two-minute lead over Primož Roglič. Surely his team will give the wunderkind a Grand Tour debut this season.
Preliminaries
Paul Seixas’s first WorldTour victory was a whomping time trial performance where he put Red Bull duo Roglič and Florian Lipowitz 28 and 33 seconds respectively in his rearview mirror. Isaac del Toro was +0:51. Seixas’s closest rival was Ineos compatriot Kévin Vauquelin, +0:23.
The Course
For a Spanish stage race with so many mountains, the Itzulia Basque Country is short on actual summit finishes. Tuesday’s stage was more like an uphill finish, one hard on the heels of Cat. 1 San Miguel de Aralar.
The first road day of a stage race often reveals who is throwing his hat in the ring for the mountains competition. On Tuesday, Joan Bou sailed his casquette by topping Cat. 2 Etxauri and then carrying on with six other fugitives. Since there were two chaps in the breakaway under a minute from the yellow jersey, Decathlon-CMA-CGM kept it on a short leash.
Two Cat. 3 climbs were close together at the beginning of the stage’s second half. The escape arrived at the foot of Zuarrarrate with a 1:50 lead. Bou took the maximum points there and atop Aldatz. Sixty-three kilometres remained and the gap to the break was 50 seconds.
Cat. 1 San Miguel de Aralar
Bou and company started up the day’s big climb with a 1:20 lead. The peloton galloped onto its first narrow slopes. Seixas went to the front and then made a surge with 6.6 km to ascend. Nobody could go with him. The Frenchman cut through the remains of the breakaway. Juan Ayuso couldn’t stay with the main chase that contained Lipowitz, del Toro, Mattias Skjelmose and Cian Uijtdebroeks.
Lipowitz lit out after Seixas on his own. Seixas tipped over 51 seconds clear and descended like a demon. Poor Mikel Landa crashed. Skjelmose and Roglič made the day’s podium.
Wednesday’s third stage just might be…
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