PARIS, June 6 — French prodigy Paul Seixas will face a stern test of his Tour de France credentials when he starts as favourite to win the week-long Tour Auvergne-Rhone Alpes on Sunday.

The 19-year-old has enjoyed a stunning season so far, winning three of his six races in 2026 and finishing second in the others.

He is already carrying the hopes of a nation on his young shoulders as the wait for a home winner of the world’s most prestigious cycle race stands at 41 years.

While the main Tour de France contenders, Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard — who have won the last six editions between them — are skipping this event, Seixas will nonetheless face some strong Grand Tour contenders.

Seixas comes into this race — which until this year’s rebranding was known as the Criterium du Dauphine — following a recent high-altitude training camp and will be racing on the roads around his home region in southeast France.

It is an event that features several mountainous stages and has long been regarded as the main warm-up event ahead of the Tour.

“I am taking on this Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes with a lot of ambition after three weeks of preparation at altitude,” Seixas said this week in a statement published by his Decathlon CMA CGM team.

“This week will be important for me because I will be able to compare my feelings to those of last year when I finished eighth.

“On roads that I know very well, those of my region, I will aim for victory and to deepen the understanding we’ve put in place since the beginning of the year with the whole team in view of the Tour de France.”

Diminished rivals

While his victories in 2026 have been impressive — one World Tour level one-day race, another one-day classic and a World Tour level stage race — victory in the Auvergne-Rhone Alpes region, which has given the week-long stage race its new name, would be his best yet.

Yet the field facing him is impressive, if not quite the elite of the elite, although his main rivals have all struggled with crashes and illness this season.

Spain’s Juan Ayuso, 23, who beat Seixas into second at the Tour of the Algarve in February, was himself a teenage prodigy when he finished third in his first ever Grand Tour at the Vuelta a Espana in 2022.

He crashed out of Paris-Nice in March when leading and then in April left the Tour of the Basque Country, which Seixas won, due to illness.

Mexican Isaac del Toro, 22, who has won the UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico this year, is another to watch, although he crashed out of the Basque Country tour and, like Ayuso, his current form and condition are unknown.

Briton Oscar Onley, 23, was fourth at last year’s Tour de France and fourth in Algarve earlier this year but pulled out of both Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie with illness.

Portugal’s Joao Almeida, who was second to Vingegaard at last year’s Vuelta a Espana, was supposed to compete in the recently-finished Giro d’Italia but illness and a lack of form forced him to change plans.

It all means that the expectation will be even greater on Seixas, who was eighth in the race last year as a little-known 18-year-old neo-pro.

This time, he is fast becoming one of the sport’s superstars and France waits with bated breath. — AFP