"No, the ambition is still just as important" - Paul Seixas refuses to lower Tour de France target after crash scare and Decathlon reshuffle

Paul Seixas has spent the final days before his Tour de France debut answering questions about more than form. The 19-year-old Decathlon CMA CGM Team leader has also had to calm nerves around his knee, his recovery and whether a reshuffled squad points to a quieter approach in his first three-week race.

His answer, three days before the Grand Depart in Barcelona, was blunt enough. The crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes hurt, disrupted his final build-up and briefly left him fearing a more serious problem. It has not changed what he wants from July.

“Don’t worry, everything is fine, I’m really in great shape,” Seixas told L’Equipe, offering the reassurance Decathlon and French fans wanted before Saturday’s opening team time trial.

Seixas crashed heavily on the road to the Grand Colombier in mid-June, fought through the rest of the stage, then abandoned the following day. With the Tour so close, the sight of Decathlon’s teenage GC project hitting the deck was always going to carry more weight than an ordinary pre-Tour fall.

The first fear, Seixas explained, was not the crash itself. “I immediately saw that the wounds were superficial, I didn’t think any further than the crash,” he said. “Afterwards, though, I was more worried about my knee. But an MRI quickly reassured me, there was only a big oedema, nothing broken.”

The aftermath still cost him time. Seixas had expected the wounds to clear quickly, only for the recovery to drag into the following week and interrupt the rhythm of his Tour preparation. “Even so, in the following days, when I saw my wounds, I thought it would take two or three days to clear up, but it took longer...” he continued. “It was complicated not being able to get back on the bike the following week. It was a small disappointment, I was a little scared at that point. There was treatment every day, it was a bit difficult to deal with.”

Since then, Seixas has completed an altitude top-up in the Alps, around the Col du Lautaret, with repeated work on climbs that will return late in the Tour. For a rider making his Tour debut at 19, that final block was less a luxury than a necessity.

Decathlon’s final selection added another question to the build-up. Olav Kooij and Cees Bol were brought into the Tour squad, giving the team a clear sprint route alongside Seixas’ general classification project. For some observers, that raised the possibility of Decathlon softening the expectation around their young French leader.

Seixas pushed back immediately. “No, the ambition is still just as important,” he said. “The goal is to achieve the best possible general classification, to learn, to see where I stand day by day. And above all, to see how I feel over three weeks.”

Seixas is not promising a podium, nor pretending that a first Tour can be treated like another stage race. But he is still speaking in GC terms: position, progression, daily measurement and the unknown of how his body responds across 21 stages.

The first test comes quickly. Saturday’s opening team time trial in Barcelona gives Decathlon an immediate chance to protect him, and the Montjuic climbs should suit a rider with Seixas’ mix of climbing strength and power. It will also show how smoothly the team can balance two different Tour objectives from the start.

Kooij gives Decathlon a realistic shot at a sprint stage. Seixas gives them the bigger long-term project: a French teenager trying to find his level in the same race as Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard.

He arrives with the MRI clear, the altitude work done and the same ambition he carried before the fall. Barcelona now becomes the first answer to the question hanging over Decathlon’s boldest Tour project: how far can Seixas already go?