Pre-race favourite Paul Seixas saw his Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes hopes dealt a major blow – but extraordinarily not a definitive one – on the penultimate day, as an early crash left him with a huge chase and a mammoth struggle on the Grand Colombier summit finish.
The 19-year-old Frenchman has set the world alight this season and has been tipped to win the former Critérium du Dauphiné en route to challenging Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard at his debut Tour de France.
But his meteoric momentum was suddenly halted on Saturday, when he crashed just 30km into stage 7, the second of three big mountain stages. What followed was remarkable.
Restarting some four minutes down, Seixas managed to gradually plug that huge gap to a fast-paced peloton over the course of a long 60km, and not without some brilliant work from his team.
With blood visible on his arms, legs, and jersey, an ailing Seixas dragged himself up the final climb, losing the wheel early but never cracking and limiting the damage to 1:21 to stage winner Isaac del Toro, whom he trails overall by 1:05 with one stage remaining.
“I said to myself, ‘it’s over, I’m never coming back’,” Seixas revealed in a post-stage interview as the day’s most combative rider.
“But what my teammates did today was crazy. I could barely hold the handlebars. But on the final climb, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to give my all until the end for these five guys who sacrificed everything for me’.”
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The crash – ‘entirely my fault’
The crash occurred on the descent of the Côte de Saint-Maurice-de-Rotherens after 30km, and Seixas took full responsibility.
The top half of the descent had, in fact, been neutralised due to gravel on the road, but Seixas said there was still gravel on the lower section as he recounted the crash that happened just after the restart.
“An error on my part. I have no excuse. I went into a corner too quick,” Seixas said.
“I’d become used to overtaking riders on descents to move up without using energy, and voila, that’s not necessarily a risk-free strategy. Today I paid for it. I took too many risks.
“I misjudged the corner. I was going around the outside of one rider, I apologise to that rider, and to the others around me, who I put in danger. It was entirely my fault. There was a ditch on the right and gravel on the left, and for a while my wheel was in between the two, and then it gave way.”
Seixas was pictured lying stricken on a grass bank at the roadside, being tended to by the race doctor. He was seen with cuts on his legs and arms, but it was his hands that took much of the impact.
“I went tumbling like a toboggan, and I went sliding first of all on my hands, at 70km/h,” he said. “For a moment, I didn’t believe I’d be able to get going again. I was really beat-up, and I could barely hold the handlebars.”
The long chase – ‘I was dead’
After taking a while to get back on his bike, Seixas found himself four minutes behind the peloton.
“I said to myself, ‘what do I do? Shall I say not to wait? Because it’s useless, I’m too far behind, I’m never going to come back’.”
But wait they did, and what ensued was a remarkable team time trial of sorts. Stefan Bissegger and then Daan Hoole, the team’s two time trial specialists, were the first to drop back for the 30km valley stretch to the first ascent of the Grand Colombier.
By the time the peloton had reached the foot of that climb with 65km remaining, they had reduced the arrears to 2:40. On the climb itself, Aurélien Paret-Peintre and Nicolas Prodhomme dropped back to take over from Hoole and Bissegger.
The plan worked, and, remarkably, Seixas reduced the gap to less than a minute by the summit. After a short descent, there was a stretch in the valley towards the Col de Richemond, where Seixas found another teammate, the young Léo Bisiaux, to plug the final part of the gap.
He finally rejoined the peloton after the intermediate sprint in Chanay with just under 40km remaining.
“Stefan and Daan did a huge job on the flat, incredible, they gave everything. Auré did the Grand Colombier full gas, and then Nico as well. They all did enormous work, as there were no gifts [from the peloton].
“On the descent, I suffered a lot; my hands and arms were beat up, and my back was stiff. But then Léo gave me the jump across. I was dead when I got back in there. But I just dug in and tried to regain the maximum strength that I had left.”
The final climb – ‘never mind the pain’
The penultimate climb of the Col de Richemond passed by without event, but Seixas soon found himself in trouble on the final climb of the Grand Colombier, this time tackled from the harder side. But once again in remarkable fashion, he dug in and refused to throw in the towel.
He dangled behind the 20-strong group of his main rivals at first, only losing significant ground when Juan Ayuso opened the attacks with 6.7km to go. Seixas could still lean on his teammate Bisiaux for a couple of kilometres, limiting losses as most of his rivals disappeared from view.
Bisiaux pulled aside 5km from the top, and from there Seixas produced another stirring comeback, stomping on the pedals to drop the yellow jersey Luke Tuckwell (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe). With Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) locked in his wheel, he made his way up the mountain virtually alone and came inching back, until the steep final couple of hundred metres when he began to fade once more.
Seixas placed seventh on the day, 1:21 behind Del Toro, just under a minute down on second-placed Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek), and 40 seconds behind Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike), Tobias Halland Johanessen (Uno-X), and Cian Uijtdebroeks (Movistar).
“I’m not proud of myself, no; I’m proud of my team,” Seixas said.
“They worked 100% for me after my idiocy, which was all my fault, and honestly, I made the whole team pay today.
“I struggled to hold the handlebars, but I did so anyway, and I thought, ‘Never mind the pain, I’m going to give my all until the end for these five guys who sacrificed everything for me, when they could have left me behind, and I would have had no complaints because it’s what I deserved.
“Just chapeau to them. They can know that I love them all.”
Tomorrow – ‘fight to the end’
This race is not over, and Seixas vowed to fight on.
He said he’d see how the evening goes but indicated abrasions were his only injuries and seemed certain he’d be on the start line on Sunday morning for the short but monstrous final stage in the mountains.
“Yes, I think I’ll start. We’ll see this evening, but I’m going to fight to the end for my team,” he said.
Overall, with one stage remaining, Seixas is sixth, trailing Luke Tuckwell by 1:54, Matteo Jorgenson by 1:12, and Isaac Del Toro by 1:05.
If he can recover overnight, victory is not completely out of sight – it would be one of the most extraordinary this race has ever seen.
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