From Vingegaard to Seixas: Olav Kooij’s Tour de France dream faces fresh setback after Decathlon move

Olav Kooij’s move to Decathlon CMA CGM Team was supposed to open a clearer path towards the Tour de France. Instead, the Dutch sprinter now looks set to miss the Grande Boucle again, with Paul Seixas’ rapid rise and his own disrupted spring reshaping the team’s July plans.

Kooij left Team Visma | Lease a Bike at the end of 2025 after several seasons in a structure where Tour de France selection was always complicated by Jonas Vingegaard’s yellow jersey ambitions. Visma’s July project was built around GC control, mountain support and the pursuit of another Maillot Jaune, leaving limited room for a full sprint train around Kooij.

At Decathlon, the picture initially looked different. Kooij arrived as a headline sprint signing, while Seixas was the team’s great French hope for the future. A double project at the Tour, with Seixas protected in the mountains and Kooij targeting sprint opportunities, was not dismissed inside the team.

Then Kooij’s season stalled before it had properly begun.

The 24-year-old missed the entire first part of the campaign because of a virus, delaying his Decathlon debut and leaving the team with a much shorter window to assess his condition before the Tour.

His return at Boucles de la Mayenne offered an immediate reminder of his quality. Kooij won two stages, showing that his finishing speed had survived the long absence. But those victories appear unlikely to be enough to secure a first Tour de France start.

“In normal circumstances, without the virus, Olav was part of the line-up alongside Paul,” Decathlon general manager Dominique Serieys told Midi Libre. “The riders dedicated to the transition stages could easily act as a sprint train without compromising the performance of the three or four climbing specialists alongside Paul. I am convinced that a double project in a Grand Tour can work. But we prefer to be cautious and avoid a relapse for Olav.”

That explanation keeps the decision from being a simple Seixas-over-Kooij call. Decathlon had considered room for both. Kooij’s illness changed the risk. The timing has made the decision especially harsh. Kooij moved away from a Tour structure dominated by Vingegaard, only to find Decathlon’s own race plan increasingly shaped by Seixas, whose 2026 season has accelerated the team’s GC ambitions faster than expected.

Seixas is no longer just a development story. The 19-year-old has already won Itzulia Basque Country, La Fleche Wallonne and Faun Ardeche Classic this season, while also finishing second behind Tadej Pogacar at both Strade Bianche and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

That rise has made his expected Tour debut one of the most intriguing storylines of the summer. Decathlon now have a French rider capable of carrying major GC attention into the country’s biggest race, and the team appear unwilling to compromise that project by taking unnecessary risks elsewhere.

Serieys pointed to the difficulty of the Tour’s opening week as another factor working against Kooij. “There were several elements to take into consideration,” he explained. “One: the start of the Tour is one of the hardest of the last ten years and the first opportunity for a sprinter to show himself is stage seven. Two: a sprinter has to feel comfortable on the climbs and inside the gruppetto. Three: we want to avoid a disappointing performance or a relapse for the rest of the season.”

For a sprinter returning from a virus-hit start to the year, that is a brutal equation. Kooij may have the speed, but Decathlon need more than speed in a Tour opening week with limited immediate reward for bringing a sprint leader.

“This week we carried out a medical check-up to understand how he digested the Boucles de la Mayenne,” Serieys added. “He should then take part in the Tour of Belgium.”

Kooij’s Decathlon reset has still shown promise. Two wins in his comeback race is exactly the kind of response the team would have wanted after months of uncertainty. In a normal season, that might have pushed him closer to a Tour debut.

This is not a normal season for Decathlon. Seixas has changed the scale of their ambition, and Kooij’s illness has made caution easier to justify. The frustration for Kooij is obvious. At Visma, the route to the Tour was crowded by Vingegaard’s yellow jersey machine. At Decathlon, the door looked wider, only for Seixas’ emergence and his own interrupted preparation to shift the balance again.

His Tour de France dream has not disappeared. But after leaving one GC-first project in search of more space, Kooij may now have to wait as another one takes centre stage.