Paul Seixas went down swinging. Well, as far as you can categorise fourth place in the Tour de France at 19 years of age as ‘down’.
But the Frenchman dreamed of the podium and he was prepared to lay it on the line to pull it off on the Tour’s final mountain stage to Alpe d’Huez on Saturday.
In the end, though, it didn’t come off, and Seixas’ extraordinary second professional season does not have the fairytale ending that was being dreamed up in his and the race’s home country.
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“I cracked. Voilà. That’s how it is,” the Decathlon CMA CGM rider said amid a huge scrum of cameras and microphones at the finish of stage 20 in Alpe d’Huez.
Seixas started the final mountain stage fourth overall, just 24 seconds down on Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), who held the white jersey of best young rider as well as the final spot on the GC podium.
Decathlon CMA CGM placed a pawn up the road in US climber Matthew Riccitello, and Seixas was able to lean on an impressive performance from Nicolas Prodhomme to set him up on the final big climb of the Col de Sarenne. But soon after Seixas took it up himself, Del Toro - who had the luxury of yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar working for him all day - moved to the fore and sent the Frenchman out of the back.
“I wanted to go as deep as possible, but there was a moment where I was on my limit, and I cracked,” Seixas admitted.
“I hoped to be stronger than usual but in the end I exploded.”
Seixas reached Alpe d’Huez nearly two minutes down on Del Toro, watching the podium slip far from view but not slipping so much as to endanger his fourth place, which he’ll seal tomorrow in Paris barring incident or accident.
“We said in the team that we had nothing to lose. Today I’m 4th, and yesterday I was 4th. We tried everything to crack Del Toro and he was just stronger today,” Seixas said.
“We say we risk it all for the podium. I’m still 4th so I didn’t lose anything. I tried everything but the legs were not good enough, the head also. That’s why I cracked after. For me it was third or nothing, and today for me it’s nothing."
But it is still fourth place on debut at the Tour de France, at 19 years of age. It is, all told, still an extraordinary achievement.
“In a few days, with a bit of air, there will be some pride,” Seixas concluded.
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