After Paul Seixas triumphed on the Queen stage of the Volta ao Algarve ahead of João Almeida and Juan Ayuso, “Seixas-mania” may have been picking up momentum, but not enough to knock a story on Olympique de Marseille off the front page of L’Equipe, such is the domination of football.
But with a Pogačar-esque performance on home soil at the Faun-Ardèche Classic on Saturday, he couldn’t be ignored, and it was time for the iconic French sports magazine to go all in: “Seixas masterclass” is how Sunday’s front page read.
The mania that Le Parisien had described had now “swept the nation” after his crushing domination of a stacked field, equalling a climbing record set by Pogačar at the European Championships on the Saint-Romain-de-Lerps (6.8 km at 7.3%) en route to a memorable solo strike.
“For me, he’s already in the top 5 or 6 in the world. We have Tadej Pogačar, Isaac Del Toro, Jonas Vingegaard, Paul Seixas, Mathieu Van der Poel, and Remco Evenepoel. In the peloton, we have this ability to sense the balance of power. And he’s already demonstrated that balance of power,” said Madiot.
“Everything is faster today, that’s true for all sports, so it’s perfectly logical that at 19 or 20 years old, we’re at physical levels that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Seixas has something that others don’t have, or that few have, like Pogačar. Messi also already had something that others didn’t have when he started kicking a ball. For now, we don’t see any weaknesses in Seixas. He has everything in his repertoire.
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