"Paul Has The GC Brief, Ben Has The Co-Leadership Rotation, And This Is The Most Explicit Two-Card Tour de France Roster The Team Has Ever Assembled" — Decathlon CMA CGM Confirm Full 2026 Tour de France Eight-Rider Squad
Tuesday late evening Lyon. Sixty days from the 4 July Lille Grande Départ, Decathlon CMA CGM have closed the second-longest-running open question on the 2026 cycling calendar with the late-Tuesday confirmation of their full eight-rider 2026 Tour de France squad. Following Monday's announcement that 19-year-old Paul Seixas will make his Grande Boucle debut as the team's protected GC leader, sport director Maxime Méderel has named the seven supporting riders at a 21:30 Lyon press conference inside the Decathlon corporate headquarters.
The squad reads — Seixas, Ben O'Connor, Kevin Vauquelin, Aurélien Paret-Peintre, Clément Champoussin, Bastien Tronchon, Sam Bennett, Julien Bernard. The eight-rider list confirms what Méderel has briefed publicly since the Strade Bianche board: a Seixas-O'Connor co-leadership rotation in which the Australian rolls into a road-captain role across the closing-week Pyrenees and Alpine blocks while Seixas carries the Grande Boucle's white-jersey best-young-rider line and a top-five outright stretch-line target.
"Paul rides the Tour with an explicit GC brief, not a stage card," Méderel told reporters at the Tuesday-evening press conference. "Ben provides the experience and the closing-mountain wisdom, but the racing card we are setting up rides through Paul's wheel. Kevin's role is the protected wingman across the Pyrenees, with Aurélien and Clément as the closing-week climbing rotation. The lead-out is Sam and Julien on the road-flat days, with Bastien providing the cobbled-stage and crosswind-defence brief on the opening-week Catalan and Lorraine sections." The team's eight-rider list is the most explicitly two-card-led Tour roster Decathlon CMA CGM have ever assembled.
Seixas opens 7/1 on the Tuesday-evening Tour de France outright board, contracted from a Monday-morning 14/1 on the post-confirmation public-market refresh and the second-favourite line behind Pogačar 4/9. Internal expected-value modelling now puts the 19-year-old Decathlon leader at 18% the closing-day Paris maillot jaune and 64% the maillot blanc best-young-rider line, the cleanest pre-Tour outright shortening a debutant has banked at the sixty-days-out checkpoint since Egan Bernal's 2018 Tour debut and a number that has the rider on track to become the youngest French Tour de France winner since Jacques Anquetil's 1957 victory at the age of 23.
O'Connor's inclusion confirms the Australian's Tour return after his 2025 Vuelta podium. The 30-year-old — who joined Decathlon CMA CGM from Jayco-AlUla on a two-year deal closed at the November 2025 Saitama Criterium — carries 22/1 on the Tuesday-evening Tour outright and an explicit closing-week stage-hunting brief on the Andorra and Pyrenean queen-stage days. The O'Connor-Seixas rotation is the closest Decathlon CMA CGM have ever come to fielding a dual-leadership Grand Tour roster, with Méderel briefing publicly that the protected card decision will be made at the Stage 14 Andorra rest day "based on the GC ledger we have at that point and not on the pre-race brief." Vauquelin 60/1 the third overall card, Paret-Peintre and Champoussin priced at 80/1 and 100/1 on stretch GC lines, with Bennett's lead-out brief targeting Stage 3 Barcelona and Stage 8 Bordeaux as the cleanest sprint-card chances on the Lille Grande Départ start list.
The squad opens its closing pre-Tour build window at the rebranded Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes — the eight-day former Critérium du Dauphiné — from 7 to 14 June, with Seixas, O'Connor and Vauquelin all confirmed on the Decathlon Dauphiné startlist. The Saturday 14 June Combloux summit and Sunday 15 June Plateau de Solaison ITT are the closing-weekend public-form pivots before the Lille Grande Départ. Seixas opens 7/1 on the rebranded-Dauphiné outright behind Pogačar 1/3 and Vingegaard 5/2 on the Tuesday-evening startlist board, the home-soil Tour de France-debut build card that the rider's 2026 spring — including his Flèche Wallonne win on 22 April as the youngest-ever winner on the Mur de Huy — has built into the cleanest GC-debut form indicator a French rider has banked at the sixty-days-out checkpoint since 2017.