Modern sport is obsessed with exclusive clubs: take tennis’ much-lauded ‘Big Three’, the all-conquering trio of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Cycling has various permutations that never quite stick: a Big Six, a Big Five, Big Four, and now increasingly – with Primoz Roglic in the somewhat drawn-out twilight of his career – a Big Three of Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel. Cycling’s problem is that Pogacar stands alone; a Big One is a daft idea.
But the last few weeks of ever-ratcheting hype have given rise to the idea that, if not now, certainly in the next couple of years, a new Big Two could dominate. And this weekend’s Liege-Bastogne-Liege is its first litmus test.
27-year-old Pogacar is in his prime, no longer the dazzling young upstart. His potential has been realised. But Paul Seixas? A wholly different story.
Some readers may not be familiar with the young Frenchman, although those numbers will be diminishing as rapidly as he pedals uphill. The 19-year-old only took his first WorldTour victory this month, at Itzulia Basque Country, a stage race in which he joined luminaries including Roglic, Juan Ayuso, and two other young sensations, Isaac del Toro and Florian Lipowitz on the start list. Del Toro was second in last year’s Giro d’Italia, Lipowitz third at the Tour de France; Seixas blew them all out of the water, winning the individual time trial, two gruelling mountain stages, and all four classifications, wearing yellow from stage two until the end.
His command of the race was astonishing, but it only confirmed what we already knew. Last autumn he was one of only 17 riders to finish a nasty edition of the European Championships, with 3,400m of climbing to surmount. He played a patient game then burst away to finish a clear third-best of the field, behind only Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel.
This spring he finished second on the rolling Tuscan hills of Strade Bianche, then warmed up for Liege-Bastogne-Liege by winning this week’s La Fleche Wallonne, surging to victory on the infamous Mur de Huy, eating up its 15 per cent gradients with ease. It made him the youngest-ever winner of the Classic. Other records will inevitably follow. Evenepoel and Pogacar both opted to skip the race to conserve their energy for the weekend – but they will have been watching with interest.
Cycling is full of young prodigies who never quite live up to early hype – Cian Uijtdebroeks, who was the next best thing a couple of years ago before a troubling couple of seasons with illness and injury problems, is one such cautionary tale and another on the startlist in Belgium.
But it’s hard not to get excited about Seixas.
The Decathlon CMA CGM rider has the weight of all of France’s hopes and expectations on his shoulders – and riding for a French team, it seems more and more likely that he will be thrust further into the spotlight with a first Tour start this summer. But he seems a measured and confident character despite the noise. He told The Athletic earlier this year: “I really need to stay calm because I guess there’s a lot of pressure on me. I take it as a positive effect, I manage it well,” and credited the “very wise” team around him for keeping him grounded.
He’ll need to be, because for all the hype, the youngster from Lyon still has a way to go. Pogacar, the three-time champion, remains the five-star favourite. The two-time world champion can so far reflect on a successful spring – a long-awaited Milan-San Remo triumph the highlight – but he was again thwarted in Paris-Roubaix and hasn’t looked quite as imperious as normal.
But after the bone-battering rock slabs of northern France, we are now firmly back in Pogacar’s preferred territory: hills, hills, and more hills. Those of Liege-Bastogne-Liege are punchier than the climbs Seixas distinguished himself on in the Basque Country, but he showed a remarkable aptitude for them on the Mur de Huy. The teenager may not be best suited to this race now, but it offers another chance for him to test himself against the best on this terrain.
Two of the best, in fact: Pogacar and Seixas’ major competition on Sunday is Remco Evenepoel, arguably a better one-day racer than a Grand Tour rider despite his best efforts to get into Tour-winning shape. He has two wins from three starts at Liege-Bastogne-Liege and warmed up for it with a dominant performance at Amstel Gold last week, when he easily got the better of Mattias Skjelmose in a two-up sprint having done much of the heavy lifting until that point.
The Belgian’s positioning in races and his impetuosity sometimes work against him, but he appears to have gone some way recently to correcting these weaknesses, and if he can keep his head screwed on should be best placed to challenge Pogacar.
Normally Tom Pidcock would be a contender too, but after falling down a ravine at the Volta a Catalunya and sustaining bone bruising, ligament damage, and stress fractures to his tibia, 260km of flat-out racing may be a step too far. But the Brit – who returned less than four weeks after his crash, having been given an eight-week timeline for recovery – still won a stage at the Tour of the Alps this week and just having him back racing, after initial fears his entire season had been derailed, is promising.
But the focus this weekend will all be on two figures: Pogacar, and the gangly youngster hoping to shadow him. The final Monument of this spring, the coda to this part of the season, offers something of a prologue to cycling’s future. On the one side, Pogacar; on the other, life beyond Pogacar.
It may not arrive this weekend; Seixas has conceded himself he “doesn’t have the level” to beat the Slovenian. But it doesn’t mean we can’t await with bated breath what’s to come.