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His Tour de France career is only a few days’ old but the hype and hullabaloo around Paul Seixas is ramping up even further.
The 19-year-old Frenchman is one of the sport’s hottest properties and the dizzying interest in him is soaring, with multiple WorldTour teams courting his signature with wallet-busting deals
His Decathlon CMA CGM team is doing what it can to hold onto him, but Visma-Lease a Bike is the latest squad to confirm that it will do what it can to lure him on board.
That offer will include a mega multi-million euro offer, of course, but so too also the offer to ‘train him to win’ the sport’s three week races.
The team has clocked up a staggering ten grand tour wins since 2019, the most of any team in that period.
A desire to sign Seixas was confirmed by team CEO Richard Plugge, who told NOS that the young rider is very much in the team’s sights. That’s the case even if the team already has a clear leader in place.
“Of course, everyone wants to talk to Seixas. Everyone wants him,” he said. “Jonas Vingegaard is our big leader at the moment, but we also have to look to the future.’
‘We’re always looking for riders behind Jonas. Either from our own development team, or someone like Seixas who’s the next big star and would fit us best. He’s super sensible, very smart, and will make a choice where he can achieve the best results.”
That objective, he suggests, is best satisfied with Visma-Lease a Bike.
“Of the current teams in the peloton, we have won the most Grand Tours,” he said. “So we believe that he has the best chance with us to start winning Grand Tours.”
Worrying the best rider in the sport
Paul Seixas is ice cool when it comes to taking on the biggest names (Photo: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Seixas has long been seen as one of the most talented young riders in the sport. Things clicked up a notch this season when the captured his first-ever pro win on a stage of the Volta ao Algave in February. That opened the floodgates and he’s now got seven to his credit, including the overall classification in Itzulia Basque Country plus the Flèche Wallonne classic.
He rode all his rivals off his wheel there, leading from the front and dropping them on the searingly-steep Mur de Huy.
And yet his near-misses are what have earned him the most attention. He was second to the sport’s biggest start Tadej Pogačar in Strade Bianche, just one minute behind. Then in Liège-Bastogne-Liège he was the only one able to resist when Pogačar went all out on the Côte de la Redoute.
He stayed with him for a further 21km, showing courage and commitment in working with the sport’s new cannibal. And while he was eventually distanced on the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons, he caused the world champion serious worry and showed just strong he had become.
Those kind of performances further ramped up interest in him, including that of Visma-Lease a Bike but also several others.
A number of suitors
Paul Seixas was sheltered from the sun after the third stage of the Tour de France (Photo: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
Pogačar’s UAE Emirates-XRG squad has already offered him a contract, as confirmed by team boss Mauro Gianetti, while HLN reported in April that Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe wants him to replace Primož Roglič as a team leader when the latter’s contract ends this year.
Netcompany Ineos is another linked to the rider, with any such deal likely boosting, and being boosted by, the reported incoming sponsorship of French energy company Total Energies. Lidl-Trek is another reportedly reaching for the chequebook.
A fifth new team on the hunt for his signature is Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling. It is bankrolled by the South African billionaire Ivan Glasenberg, who is reported very keen to ink the deal.
Some reports suggest he is open to offering him an eye-watering 13 million euro per season, although Pogačar’s agent Alex Carera was skeptical of this amount in a recent interview with Velo.
Decathlon is, of course, very keen to keep its big star. Aside for pushing for an increase in budget from its sponsors to cover any pay rise plus the need to sign new riders to further strengthen the squad, it is reportedly even willing to give up one aspect of its national identity.
The team is currently registered in France but laws there requiring employers to pay a chunk of salaries to social security are a barrier. They make it comparatively much more expensive to give contracts to riders but the team is reportedly prepared to change its license to Swiss to sidestep this issue.
The squad’s backers Decathlon and CMA CGM have also indicated they would ramp up their commitment in order to keep him on board.
‘We stick to the rules’
Many teams want to sign Seixas, with this driving up his price (Photo: Gongora/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
What’s clear is the more suitors which court the rider, the higher the offers will grow. That will be even more pronounced if he has a strong performance in his debut Tour de France.
Seixas is already the youngest rider to take part since 1937 and any big rides will be seen in that context. A stage win or a podium finish would inevitably put interest through the roof.
Visma will be amongst the many squads in contact with Seixas’ agent Joona Laukka now and in the weeks ahead. However Plugge has suggested there are constraints.
“He’s with Decathlon and still has a contract there,” he said. “He has to stick to that, and we stick to the rules. We’re not doing anything concrete.
“But if he decides to move to another team, we are the best team to train him to win Grand Tours.”
That’s a bold claim, but one Seixas will keep in mind. Also possible, though, is that offers from Visma and UAE Emirates-XRG may be affected by the fact that they already have clear leaders in place.
With Vingegaard still likely to aim for Tour success for another couple of seasons, and both Pogačar and Isaac Del Toro to the fore as current and future grand tour stars, it is possible the Frenchman will either stay where he is or go somewhere where he would have clear billing as the undisputed leader.
Either way, being in demand will only ramp the financial offers up even more.