As this year’s Tour looks to be the most exciting in decades, with four potential winners (let’s call them the Fab Four) – Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates–XRG), Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike), Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Remco Evenepoel – this race will be watched with great interest. The primary reason is the 19-year-old Seixas, who has so far lived up to all the hype that accompanied him since his early years on the road.
The favourite?
Seixas was not originally scheduled to ride the Tour de France, but after victories in La Flèche Wallonne and Itzulia Basque Country, plus impressive second-place finishes behind Pogačar at Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, his coaches changed their minds. After that excellent spring, the teenage superstar went to a high-altitude training camp and reportedly put up very impressive numbers while riding some 1,500 km, including 37,000 metres of climbing.
“I am looking at this Tour Auvergne–Rhône-Alpes with a lot of ambition after three weeks at altitude,” the confident Seixas said in a press release. “This week is very important for me because I can compare my feelings, especially in terms of recovery, with last year. I was eighth then. It’s the roads I know well, the roads of my home region. I will go for the win, and hope to build further on the foundations we have laid together with the whole team at the start of the year, towards the Tour de France.”
All eyes – especially those of French cycling fans – will be on him when the Tour Auvergne kicks off on Sunday with a tough stage that includes five categorised climbs culminating in a modest uphill finish.
The other favourite
His main rival looks to be another cycling prodigy, 22-year-old Isaac del Toro, Pogačar’s lieutenant in the Tour and winner of this year’s UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico. He will be supported here by another strong UAE Team Emirates–XRG GC rider, João Almeida. Or vice versa. Depending on early results, del Toro may be supporting Almeida, who has Grand Tour ambitions of his own.
Both riders are returning from injuries and have not ridden in two months. But, as Jhonatan Narváez showed in the Giro, where he was in the form of his life after missing more than four months of racing, that is no handicap for a UAE rider. So either of them – though especially del Toro – will provide a real test for the young Frenchman. Seixas raced against del Toro in the Strade Bianche, where the Mexican sat on his wheel while he was trying to chase down Pogačar, and then appeared to let him beat him to the line as a courtesy. But I think the Seixas riding in the Tour Auvergne will be a much-improved version of the rider we saw in the Strade Bianche.
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Del Toro might have something to prove after UAE admitted it was looking to sign Seixas as a replacement for Pogačar when the Slovenian retires, a role del Toro no doubt had seen himself filling. Oddly, though we have more information about the Mexican than we do about Seixas, we also really don’t know just how good he is, especially in a three-week Grand Tour.
We recall his performance in last year’s Giro d’Italia, where he seemed on the verge of winning the race when he made a series of bad racing decisions on the penultimate stage, allowing Visma’s Simon Yates to steal the win. Perhaps that cost him the confidence of the UAE staff, so he may see this race as a way to get in their good graces again, at the expense of the rider they apparently would rather have. It’s an intriguing scenario.
Ayuso and the others
His former teammate at UAE, Juan Ayuso, is also returning from an injury suffered in the Itzulia Basque Country and is able to boast that he defeated Seixas in the Volta ao Algarve in February. But his first year with Lidl-Trek has not gone the way he or his team had envisaged. Still, he’s an exciting rider and finally in a position to prove that, as he clearly believes, he should be classed with the best. He will also be riding in the Tour and, as in this race, must be considered a wild card with the potential to upset or at least make the podium.
There are other riders in the race who could be in the mix at the end, such as Netcompany INEOS’s Oscar Onley, who finished fourth in last year’s Tour but has had a disappointing first few months with his new team. His schedule after this race has not yet been made public, so this may be an audition for a spot at the Tour for a team that doesn’t seem to have a rider capable of challenging the Fab Four. Thymen Arensman finished a distant fourth in the recent Giro d’Italia, and Egan Bernal was tenth. A podium finish here may clinch it for Onley. Or for Kévin Vauquelin, another young rider the team brought in this year to improve its Grand Tour prospects.
Two of Vingegaard’s Tour de France lieutenants, Matteo Jorgenson and Wout van Aert, are also racing in the Tour Auvergne. Jorgenson – who is also returning from injury and has also not raced in two months – is a very good climber, but not of the calibre of Seixas and del Toro. Van Aert is in his best form in several years, as his spectacular victory over Pogačar in Paris-Roubaix showed. The two Visma riders are no doubt riding for stage wins – and maybe to pilot 21-year-old Jørgen Nordhagen.
The young Norwegian has shown flashes of real talent, such as his second place in this year’s O Gran Camiño, and will be riding the Vuelta later this year, perhaps as the team’s GC rider. (This is speculation and assumes that Vingegaard won’t be going for an unprecedented Grand Tour triple if he wins the Tour.) Nordhagen won’t challenge the favourites, but he’ll be interesting to watch as an eventual replacement for Vingegaard after the Dane hangs up his cycling shoes.
Other riders to keep an eye on are the improving Ben Healey (EF Education–EasyPost), Harold Tejada (XDS Astana), Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) and Dani Martínez (Red Bull–BORA–Hansgrohe).
