Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) is coming for Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG). He may have fallen short at Strade Bianche on Saturday, but while the World Champion was able to solo nonchalantly to a record fourth victory, the 19-year-old Frenchman in second place suggested he won’t have things all his own way for long.
Seixas is the sport’s latest teenaged super-talent and, after an eye-catching debut season in 2025, looks to have made the step to the very top of the sport since the turn of this year. A stage win and second overall at the Volta ao Algarve was followed by a win at the Faun Ardèche Classic, sending the hype machine into overdrive ahead of Saturday’s meeting with Pogačar.
Seixas couldn’t quite give the Slovenian the match many had hoped for, but he stood head and shoulders ahead of most of the world’s top riders as the best of the rest.
“I didn’t say it beforehand but we had the podium as an objective today,” Seixas said. “It was a very ambitious objective – I’d never done the race, I knew almost nothing about the gravel sectors.
“I knew I could play on my talents as a cyclo-cross rider, albeit a retired one – two years ago I stopped. But I fought all day to go after this result.”
Seixas was among the nine riders to go clear as Pogačar’s UAE team split the race on Monte Sante Marie, and he came agonisingly close to following the World Champion when he made his race-winning move a few kilometres later, and almost 80km from the finish.
In fact, Seixas said he was disrupted by Pogačar’s teammate, Isaac del Toro.
“I tried to follow him [Pogačar]. He attacked just ahead of a descent. They played the team card. Del Toro was blocking. He really didn’t want me to get past. I was going by him, he was going by me, and he was breaking in front of me. I lost a bit of time on the descent, them I had to plug the hole that he had made.”
Seixas, remarkably, almost did just that. In fact, he started to claw Pogačar back and for a moment it looked like he was ripping up the script that we’ve grown so used to at Strade Bianche in the past few years.
But just as he was regaining contact at the top of the main climbing section of Monte Sante Marie, Pogačar kicked again and left him in the dust.
“I…
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