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French starlet Seixas to ride Tour de France in July / Photo: © AFP/File
French starlet Seixas to ride Tour de France in July
French teenage prodigy Paul Seixas announced on Monday that he will ride the Tour de France in July for the first time, raising hopes of a first home winner in more than four decades.
No Frenchman has won the Tour since Bernard Hinault did so for a record-equalling fifth time in 1985.
The 19-year-old Seixas has been in stunning form this season, winning seven races and pushing all-time great Tadej Pogacar close in the Liege-Bastogne-Liege Monument one-day classic a week ago.
He has ridden two week-long stage races and four one-day classics this season, and has not finished below second.
He will be the youngest rider to start a Tour in 89 years when the Grand Boucle begins in Barcelona on July 4.
In a video posted to social media by Seixas's Decathlon CMA CGM team, he is shown visiting his grandparents in the eastern Haut-Savoie region near his home in Lyon.
"I've come here to announce to you something special, I have a race in July," he tells his grandparents, before they guess that he is talking about the Tour.
Seixas's potential participation in the sport's most prestigious race has been the subject of much speculation, especially since he has demonstrated that he is already one of the best riders in the world.
Many experts believe it is too soon for him to tackle the 3,333 kilometer (2,069 mile) long three-week race, which includes eight mountain stages, including five summit finishes.
It will be his first grand tour and the first time he has tackled a race longer than eight days.
But he has excelled in every other challenge put before him this season.
"If he's not ready, then who is ready?" his Belgian team-mate Oliver Naesen told Cyclingnews last month.
"He's 100 percent ready to go to the Tour."
But Marc Madiot, the sporting director of rival French team Groupama-FDJ United believes it would be unwise for the young star to compete so soon.
"We underestimate what the Tour de France is," he told RMC radio station on Sunday.
"When you ride the Tour de France... you enter into a washing machine which wears you down, which devours you day after day," he added.
And in four-time winner Pogacar, Seixas will be up against "someone who destroys his rivals mentally one after another, even his own team-mates."
H.Reyes--SFF
