While the 2025 Critérium du Dauphiné is where professional road racing waves goodbye to one of French cycling's longstanding leading stars, Romain Bardet, it also welcomes several riders from the nation's fast-rising next generation.
21-year-old Lenny Martinez is leading the GC charge for Bahrain Victorious before taking on the Tour de France next month, while at Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, teenager Paul Seixas is tackling his second WorldTour stage race.
The 18-year-old neo-pro made the jump from the junior ranks with Decathlon AG2R's under-19 squad to the pros this season, making his debut with a fifth place at the GP La Marseillaise in February.
Since then, he has finished second at Paris-Camembert, raced the UAE Tour, and won the points classification at the Tour of the Alps in Italy, a race in which he appeared on the stage podium on three of the five stages.
Since his last outing, Seixas has spent three weeks at altitude in Sierra Nevada with his team, and rather than heading back to Italy to race the Giro d'Italia Next Gen, he's now taking on the Dauphiné.
"Being there was another small step in my career. I've already taken a few, this was a new one, and the Dauphiné will be another one," Seixas told L'Equipe of his time at altitude.
"I was also able to spend more time with some of the riders who will be doing the Tour de France for the first time, to see how they work, their methods."
Seixas said his team saw that racing the Dauphiné could be "possible, even beneficial" following his performances at the Tour of the Alps, where he finished 12th overall and concluded the final stage with a second place in a one-two with teammate Nicolas Prodhomme.
"For the rest of my career, lining up there to gain experience was more interesting. We talked a lot. I thought I had something to achieve," he said. "They had observed that racing with the 'big boys' could be a better opportunity for me.
"It's flattering. The team shows me that they have confidence in me, in my performances, and they recognise that I have to move on to the next level."
The Dauphiné is the biggest race of Seixas' young career to date, pitting himself against the likes of Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) over eight days of racing.
He told L'Equipe he's at the race to "benchmark myself against these riders" and talked of the general classification and opportunities to win a stage.
"I'm going there to gain experience, to benchmark myself against these riders. It's definitely good for the future, to test myself by competing for the overall standings," he said.
"I want to see how it goes. And we'll see at the end. Winning a stage when there's Pogačar, Vingegaard, Evenepoel, the best in the world, and so on, will be complicated. But if there's an opportunity to seize, I'll seize it."
After three days of racing, Seixas currently lies 36th overall and, like a bulk of GC riders, 1:18 off the lead of Iván Romeo. The toughest tests, a final trio of mountain stages, lie later in the week, but Seixas isn't feeling any pressure.
"No, it's positive! We're at home, on roads we know well - even very, very well for some of us. It's a boost!" he said.
"When you have your home crowd, people you know, on a race you watched on TV, you're fully committed."
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