He did it! While we were expecting him to be on the road race of these Road World Championships scheduled for Thursday, Paul Seixas has already struck a first time this Monday by winning the title of Junior World Champion in the time trial, becoming the first Frenchman to win in this discipline in the U19 category! On the eve of celebrating his 18th birthday, the young Frenchman treated himself to a superb rainbow jersey as a birthday present at the end of the 24.9 kilometres of the Swiss course. However, and unlike the Elites the day before, the course was entirely flat around Zurich, which was not necessarily to the advantage on paper of the one we know above all for his domination in the mountains this year. But the team’s prodigy Decathlon AG2R The World – with whom he will turn professional next year – was able to make his big engine do the talking and take advantage of perfect race management to narrowly beat the two Belgians Jasper Schoofs And Matisse Van Kerchove.
Video – Paul Seixas in bronze at the last European Championships
A double in sight on Thursday to imitate Remco Evenepoel?
Having started cautiously, the Tricolore was only in 4th place at the first two intermediate points, even though he was still in the game for the medal with less than ten seconds behind. But the Lyon phenomenon had kept some energy under the pedal to achieve an exceptional last third of the race which allowed him to take the lead, signing the best provisional time in 28 minutes and 8 seconds at an average speed of over 53 km/h. All that remained was to wait for the arrival of his last rivals, who broke their teeth one by one on his time trial.
Jasper Schoofs fails at 6 seconds and takes silver, just one second ahead of his compatriot Matisse Van Kerchovein bronze. The other Frenchman engaged Louis Chaleil finished just outside the top 10, 45 seconds behind. Paul Seixas succeeds his Australian teammate in the prize list Oscar Chamberlain and gets his 13th victory in an extraordinary season. This could be further magnified in three days with the road race, of which he will be the big favorite. In the event of a double, he would imitate a certain Remco Evenepoelthe last runner to achieve such an accomplishment in 2018.
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