Can Paul Seixas Survive Five Mountain Stages and Win Itzulia Basque Country?
Twenty-four hours ago, nobody outside the Decathlon-CMA CGM camp could have predicted that a 19-year-old Frenchman would be leading the Itzulia Basque Country after the opening stage. Paul Seixas's time trial victory in Bilbao was not merely good — it was historically dominant. The teenager dismantled a field containing Primož Roglič, Isaac del Toro and Juan Ayuso by margins that suggested his rivals had turned up unprepared for what they were facing. Seixas won by 23 seconds over Kévin Vauquelin, with del Toro and Roglič a further four and five seconds adrift respectively. The GC gap is already substantial — and for a time trial specialist turned all-rounder, it is the perfect cushion.
The central question now is whether Seixas can do something that very few time trial specialists have managed in Basque Country history: hold off a field of elite climbers across five days of punishing mountain terrain. Itzulia is not a race that hands out cushions — the Basque roads are steep, relentless and unforgiving, and the men who win here are typically pure mountain racers who can attack on the final climbs of the final stages. Roglič is the race's most successful recent champion. Del Toro has already won multiple WorldTour stage races in 2026. Ayuso is riding the best cycling of his career. These are not men who will passively cede a 20-second lead without an almighty fight.
And yet Seixas's time trial margin is not insignificant in the context of what typically unfolds at Itzulia. The race's mountain stages are punishing but rarely produce GC separations of more than 30-40 seconds between the elite level riders — the climbs here are aggressive rather than marathon, demanding repeated accelerations rather than sustained Alpine power. A rider who is 20 seconds up after day one and can limit his losses to 5-7 seconds per stage across the mountain days could, conceivably, arrive at the final time trial in a competitive position. Whether Seixas has that kind of mountain endurance is the question nobody has yet been able to answer.
His Decathlon-CMA CGM team have been careful not to oversell his climbing credentials. "We know he is a complete rider — that is why he is here as leader," team director Guillaume Martin said after Monday's stage. "We don't think he will be the strongest climber in the race over five days. We think he has enough buffer to defend, and we will race accordingly." That is a realistic, honest assessment. The team's race plan will almost certainly be defensive — protect the lead, limit losses on the worst climbs, seek to neutralise attacks through clever positioning and aggressive marking rather than by trying to match the pure climbers blow for blow.
The threat posed by Roglič is the most immediate. The Slovenian veteran knows these roads better than any other current professional — he has won Itzulia multiple times and has an almost instinctive understanding of where the race can be won and where it must be controlled. He is already only 20 seconds down, a manageable gap for a climber of his calibre across five demanding days. Del Toro, meanwhile, arrives here in extraordinary form — his victories in earlier 2026 stage races have demonstrated that he can impose himself over multiple days in the mountains in a way that even the established names struggle to follow. At 22 years old, the Mexican is operating at a level that already marks him as one of the great climbers of his generation.
There is also a wildcard that makes Seixas's lead more interesting than it initially appears: the final stage time trial. Itzulia traditionally concludes with a substantial individual test, and if Seixas can arrive within range of the overall lead heading into that final day, his time trial superiority could become decisive again. The scenario of a young Frenchman leading a Grand Tour-calibre field into a final time trial — and winning — is not as improbable as it might sound. That is exactly what makes this a story worth following across the coming days.
Whatever happens, Seixas has already announced himself to the world in a way that his talent always promised but the timing never quite allowed. His winning time trial in Bilbao was not a fluke — it was the confirmation of something that has been building quietly within the Decathlon programme for the past two years. Whether he can complete the story and become the youngest Itzulia winner in the modern era remains to be seen. But the race has a new protagonist, and the established order of del Toro, Roglič and Ayuso is going to have to work hard to reclaim it.