Seixas Conquers The Grand Colombier And Rips The Yellow Jersey From Tuckwell's Shoulders
The home crowd got the ride they had been screaming for all week. Paul Seixas turned the slopes of the Grand Colombier into a coronation, attacking with more than four kilometres of climbing still to come and soloing to the biggest victory of his young career to win Stage 7 of the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes — and, in the same breathless half hour, to tear the yellow jersey from the shoulders of Luke Tuckwell.
For six days the GC men had circled one another, content to let a breakaway hand Tuckwell a three-minute cushion at Crest-Voland. On the Grand Colombier there was nowhere left to hide, and it was the 19-year-old Frenchman who finally lit the fuse. When Seixas jumped clear of the maillot jaune group on the steepest middle ramps, only Juan Ayuso could even pretend to follow, and the pretence lasted barely a hundred metres.
Behind, UAE Team Emirates-XRG had spent the climb trying to suffocate Seixas with numbers, sending Isaac del Toro up the road early and holding Ayuso in reserve. But the diesel engine the Decathlon-CMA CGM team had promised proved too much. Seixas simply rode away from the lot of them, his tempo never wavering as the gap to the chasers ticked outward hairpin by hairpin.
At the summit, Seixas crossed the line alone with both arms aloft, 38 seconds clear of Ayuso, who salvaged second after a brave but doomed chase. Del Toro came home third at 51 seconds, with Jorgen Nordhagen hanging tough in fourth to keep his own podium hopes flickering. The Norwegian climber has been the quiet revelation of the week and remains very much in the conversation.
Tuckwell, who had defended his lead with enormous courage on the lower slopes, finally cracked inside the last five kilometres and haemorrhaged time, surrendering more than two minutes by the line. His adventure in yellow was always built on borrowed time, but the young Briton leaves the Grand Colombier with enormous credit and a stage-racing pedigree nobody saw coming a week ago.
Seixas now leads the overall classification, but the margins are knife-thin. He holds just 19 seconds over Ayuso and 41 over Del Toro heading into Sunday's closing time trial — a discipline that does not flatter the slight Frenchman and very much suits the UAE pair. The Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes will be decided not on a mountain but against the clock.
With the build-up to the Tour de France now measured in days rather than weeks, the symbolism of the afternoon was impossible to miss. France has spent years waiting for a Grand Tour contender of its own, and on the Grand Colombier it watched a teenager drop two of the most feted young climbers in the world. Whatever happens against the clock on Sunday, Paul Seixas announced himself in full.