If anything, the 2026 UCI Road World Championships demonstrated how hard it is to translate results on paper into a result on a day as long, chaotic, and difficult as the elite men's road race on Sunday. For Paul Seixas, 15th place behind solo winner Brandon McNulty (USA) was a massive disappointment after the 20-year-old Frenchman came into the race as one of the top favourites to win.
"It was a tough race; for me it was perfect. It's a huge disappointment," Seixas told Eurosport and other media, including Cyclingnews, in the mixed zone. "My teammates gave everything to help me get the best result, and it was a failure."
Leading up to the 2026 UCI Road World Championships in Montreal, all eyes were on Seixas for the elite men's road race. The breakthrough rider of the year with victories in the Itzulia Basque Country, La Flèche Wallonne, and fourth overall in the Tour de France, Seixas was perhaps most importantly a close second to Isaac del Toro in the Grand Prix de Montreal two weeks before Worlds.
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The French team believed in his chances at Worlds and set out to make the race as tough as possible. His teammates lined out the peloton as they reached the demanding 12 circuits around Mont Royal, with Bruno Armirail single-handedly ending the race for rider after rider with a 60km turn on the front.
Valentin Paret-Peintre, Jordan Jegat and Alex Baudin took turns attacking, dropping riders of the quality of Vuelta a España winner Enric Mas (Spain), but their plan began to come unglued after a dangerous attack containing Wout van Aert (Belgium), Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands), and Primož Roglič (Slovenia), among others.
Seixas held on as his group caught the breakaway, but when eventual winner Brandon McNulty (USA) attacked, he did not react and found himself in the unenviable position of being in a chasing group that just could not cooperate.
On the final lap, when McNulty was only a shade more than ten seconds ahead, Tom Pidcock (Great Britain) and Giulio Ciccone (Italy) attacked on the course's main climb to try to bridge the gap, and Seixas not only couldn't follow them, he eventually lost contact with the chasing group altogether because of cramps.
"Everything was going so well, my legs felt incredible, and honestly, I don't want to talk about it. It's a shame what I did today, cramping up like that," Seixas said.
"It was a childish mistake; I've never cramped up on a bike in my life. I'm disappointed in myself, but it's what I deserve. My teammates did an incredible job. They don't deserve a leader like me. It must be hydration, I don't know, I don't really want to talk about it."
When France's team director Thomas Voeckler arrived at the mixed zone later and was told what Seixas had said, he was quite surprised.
"'It was my fault'? I'm searching for why he said that. But it was in the heat of the moment," Voeckler said. "Last year in the time trial in Kigali, it was the same thing; he was beating himself up."
Seixas is clearly a very ambitious rider, but 273.4 kilometres is the farthest he's ever had to race. Having just turned 20 three days ago, it's also a massive ask for a rider so young.
"He aims so high, and he declared that anything other than a gold medal would be a failure," Voeckler said. "So there you have it. Of course, it's the world championships. We are here, there are a lot of us, and we believed in it, and he did at first, too.
"So we did everything we could to try and be good, but that doesn't necessarily mean we'll win in the end. But if you don't give it your all, you're sure not to succeed," Voeckler said. "We did what we had to do. Especially with Bruno (Armirail) - it wasn't overdoing it. We wanted to make the race harder, and then, it's true that it got out of our control a bit because everything was incredibly intense. It's just not our day today, that's all.
"There was a breakaway with a great rider. [Seixas] was isolated, to my taste, from his teammates a little early. But it is what it is; it can happen. We made the race tougher when we wanted.
"I maintain that it was in Paul's interest, given his profile relative to the course and the likes of Mathieu van der Poel. If you don't make the race hard at that point, someone is always just waiting.
"Brandon McNulty took magnificent advantage of the Belgian and French strategy. When you see Michael Matthews [who finished second] or Mathieu Van der Poel [third] who are there at the finish...
"If we hadn't pushed the pace and there had been four more laps of waiting, other puncheurs would have been there. It's obviously a huge disappointment, but my job is also to mitigate that. This is also what allows us to savour the times when things are better, the times when things have been good, and the times when things will get even better."
Fortunately for Seixas, at an age when most of his peers are still racing the Under-23 category, he has many more chances to make up for his 'childish mistake' in the future. And will be desperate to right the wrongs of Sunday's race as soon as Il Lombardia arrive in the coming weeks, his final big goal for 2026.
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