Seixas Survives A Brutal Final Time Trial To Win The Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes Overall
It was supposed to be the day his rivals took the race back. Instead, Paul Seixas turned the closing time trial of the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes into the final act of a coronation, defending his slender lead against a charging Juan Ayuso to seal the first WorldTour stage race overall victory of his career at just 19 years of age.
The maths had been merciless on paper. Seixas began the day 19 seconds clear of Ayuso and 41 ahead of Isaac del Toro, defending a mountain man's advantage in the one discipline where his lightweight frame offers no shelter. Few neutrals gave him better than even odds of holding on against two of the strongest time triallists of their generation.
Ayuso threw everything at the course. The Spaniard set the fastest time of the day by a comfortable margin, taking the stage and clawing back chunks of his deficit at every intermediate check. For a few agonising minutes, with Seixas still out on the road, it looked as though the dream might come undone in the final kilometres.
But Seixas rode the time trial of his life. Pacing the effort with a maturity that belied his age, the Decathlon-CMA CGM leader limited his losses to Ayuso to just 11 seconds across the entire stage, crossing the line and collapsing over his handlebars knowing he had done enough. The final overall margin — eight seconds — will be remembered as one of the tightest in the race's recent history.
Del Toro completed the podium in third, with Jorgen Nordhagen a hugely promising fourth overall after a week that confirmed the Norwegian as one of the sport's fastest-rising climbers. Luke Tuckwell, whose days in yellow lit up the middle of the race, slipped to a creditable placing on GC but leaves with his reputation transformed.
For UAE Team Emirates-XRG the result will sting. Holding the two strongest cards in Ayuso and Del Toro, the team controlled much of the race yet still found themselves outfoxed and outclimbed by a teenager riding for the home crowd. Ayuso's time-trial masterclass was the consolation of a man who did everything right and still came up eight seconds short.
The timing could hardly be more pointed. With the Tour de France now just weeks away and set to open in Barcelona, France suddenly has a genuine home contender to dream about. Seixas will not arrive at the Grande Boucle as a leader, but he arrives as a winner — and as living proof that the next generation of Grand Tour racing has already begun.
"I don't have the words," a tearful Seixas said at the finish. "To win at home, in front of these people, against riders like Juan and Isaac — this is everything I have worked for. The time trial was the longest twenty minutes of my life." On this evidence, it will not be the last great day of a career that is only just beginning.