Yet Delgado, winner of the 1988 Tour de France and now an analyst for RTVE, believes the pressure surrounding the French teenager could become one of the biggest challenges he faces during the race. “Paul Seixas, the emerging champion of French cycling, who is capable of going toe-to-toe with Pogacar, the true dominant force in cycling over recent years, is going to ride the Tour,” Delgado explained. “On one hand, it seems like great news, but I do have my reservations.”“Racing without pressure is a lie”
One of the biggest talking points surrounding Seixas’ Tour debut has been the idea that the 19-year-old can simply use the race as a learning experience without expectation.
Delgado does not believe that is realistic. “Racing without pressure is a lie. He is going to race with enormous pressure,” he warned. “Maybe the team tells him, ‘stay calm’, but you’re at the Tour, the dream race. Everybody is talking about you, everybody is cheering for you, you see yourself close to the best riders… you are going to get pulled into the race no matter what.”
The Spaniard stressed that he has little doubt Seixas possesses the physical level required to survive the race. Instead, his concerns are more about the mental toll of three weeks under constant attention.
“Nineteen years old, I think that’s very young. Physically, I think he can do it. Mentally, he seems very focused to me, but this idea of racing without pressure, I don’t know to what extent that’s true.”
“The third week you feel like you are dying”
Delgado also pointed to the unique brutality of a Grand Tour as something impossible to fully understand until a rider experiences it firsthand. “I think he will have a really good first week, and then we will have to see about the second and third week,” he said. “The routine, the monotony of day-to-day racing. That is a real ticking time bomb for a rider. The first week is excitement, the second fatigue starts to appear, and by the third week you feel like you are dying.”
That fear, according to Delgado, is not just about physical exhaustion. “The fear I have for that type of rider is the consequences it could leave behind, that bitter memory of a three-week race that could make him lose confidence in himself, a confidence that is currently extremely high.”
Because of that, Delgado admitted he would have preferred Seixas to make his Grand Tour debut later in the season at the Vuelta a Espana rather than immediately stepping into the pressure of the Tour de France spotlight.
“For me, the ideal thing would have been to ride the Vuelta a España,” Delgado explained. “You learn what a three-week race is there, you race without pressure, you learn the routine and understand what it feels like to arrive in the final week with an empty tank.”
Seixas will make a highly-anticipated Tour de France debut this summer
French pressure adds another layer
The former Tour winner also believes Seixas’ nationality changes the equation completely. “It’s true that riding the Tour for a French rider is the ultimate dream, but I think he should wait so he does not end up with a bitter memory,” Delgado said. “If he were Spanish, Italian or German, he could probably race without that pressure. But being French, with the country’s need for a champion, racing without pressure is simply not going to happen.”
Seixas will start the Tour at 19 years and 283 days old, making him the youngest rider to appear in the race since 1932 according to Pro Cycling Stats. Only one other teenager, Danny van Poppel in 2013, has started the race in that period.
That statistic alone underlines just how unusual the situation surrounding Seixas has already become before the Tour has even begun.