The rider

Paul Seixas carries the kind of French expectation that can make a teenager feel ancient before his first Tour has even started. At 19 years, 9 months and 10 days, he is set to become the youngest Tour starter since 1937, yet Decathlon are not presenting him as a mascot. His spring demanded a serious response: Flèche Wallonne, the Itzulia overall with three stage wins, and second at Liège behind Pogačar. France has waited decades for a rider who can make yellow feel like a future rather than a memory.

The trick is protecting the person from the projection. Seixas has the light climbing style, racing intelligence and fearlessness that make people reach for enormous comparisons, but a Tour de France is not a one-week stage race. It is traffic, weather, recovery, positioning, public noise and repeated days where nothing spectacular happens except the slow draining of energy. Decathlon's language of ambition and humility is not just public relations. It is a survival plan for a rider whose talent invites impatience.

On the bike, Seixas gives the team a true GC reference point. Riccitello can share pressure, Prodhomme and Paret-Peintre can guide him in the mountains, and Benoot can keep him away from traps before the climbs. The result could be explosive or educational, and perhaps both. A stage win, a white-jersey battle, a top-ten push or a painful lesson would all fit the scale of a first Tour. What matters most is that France finally has a young climber who makes the race feel open-ended again.