His name has been on the lips of French cycling followers for a year, but this Thursday, he revealed himself to the eyes of the whole world. Crowned with his first professional victory on the second stage of the Tour of the Algarve, Paul Seixas brought down João Almeida and Juan Ayuso, two leaders of the peloton, at the end of a breathtaking uphill sprint.
Enough to attract the compliments of the Spaniard, crowned best youngster of the Vuelta in 2023 but impressed by the precocity of the 19-year-old jewel. “It was really close, I think I lost by less than half a wheel, but that’s how it is. Paul deserves his victory,” Ayuso conceded to the specialist media Domestique.
“I said before the race that he was a great rival”
“The sprint was difficult, I think I made a mistake because I knew I had to go into the penultimate corner first. Paul was stronger and smarter than me, he knew how to anticipate,” congratulated the leader of the Lidl-Trek team, still leader of the general classification ahead of Seixas.
“When he started his sprint, he was more than two bike lengths ahead of me and I didn’t have time to catch up with him at the finish line,” analyzed the 23-year-old rider, aware of having given in to a potential phenomenon. “I said before the race that he was a great rival. I saw it last year, especially at the end of the season at the European Championships,” he recalled, referring to the third place won by the Frenchman behind Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel, while Ayuso finished in sixth position.
“He will become one of the greatest, and today (THURSDAY) he proved it again,” concluded the Spaniard, not stingy with compliments, while the two men should battle until Sunday for the race leader’s jersey.
Second at the same time as his rival, Seixas will try to regain the lead in the general classification at the end of the time trial scheduled for this Friday on a 19 km circuit. The opportunity to recall that the prodigy of the Decathlon CMA-CGM team was crowned world time champion among juniors two years ago.
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