“Coughing like a chain-smoker,” Seixas admits he rode the entire Tour de l’Avenir feeling like crap

L'Equipe wrote Saturday morning that Seixas had been “coughing like a chain-smoker” for the past two weeks. Still, it wasn’t enough to give Widar or Nordhagen an opening. After winning the prologue on day one, Seixas sealed the race in the final time trial, beating his nearest challengers by half a minute. On stages 5 and 6a, Widar had managed to drop him on the climbs, but on the TT bike the roles were reversed.

It was, as L’Équipe described it, “an awkward situation.” Seixas lined up for a week against his age-group peers, something he doesn’t usually do during the rest of the season, unlike Nordhagen and Widar. That made him the overwhelming favorite, much like Tadej Pogacar, Egan Bernal, and Isaac Del Toro in previous editions. “Paul made things difficult for himself by riding this race, where everyone wanted to beat him,” said François Trarieux, coach of the French national team.

“It was tense, I really had to fight all the way to the end, and I went through some tough moments in my head,” admitted Paul Seixas. According to the Frenchman, he wasn’t at his best either before or during the Tour de l’Avenir. “I questioned whether I had the level to win. I even asked myself if I should start, because my training numbers weren’t great. But resilience was the key word. I had to find the mental strength at moments of doubt, racing as the favorite without being at 100 percent.”

In that sense, the Tour de l’Avenir became a journey of discovery for Seixas, not physically, but mentally. “I wasn’t stronger than the others, but the team put me in this position. I wanted to finish it off, no matter the pressure.” Throughout the week, he raced aggressively, something he admits he can’t always do at pro level yet. Coach François Trarieux saw it as an important step: “He found the spark on the bike again. We talked about how he needs to control that urge to win at all costs.”

Getting beaten twice uphill by Jarno Widar also proved an important lesson. “I was defeated, and that happens. I made some small mistakes, but that’s part of the process.”