Paul Seixas won the Tour of Lombardy on Saturday, aged twenty, his first Monument (one of cycling’s five biggest one-day races) and the youngest winner in the history of the race. Attack at 19 kilometres out, Pogacar dethroned after five wins. Fine. On Sunday at 8:15 he starts in Fréjus for the Roc d’Azur. On a mountain bike. 55 kilometres.
I heard it on the van radio, in a cyclocross car park, and I put the spanner down.
Because the part at fault here is not him. It is the bike waiting for him. A road bike, after a Monument, goes back in the truck and waits for its wash. A mountain bike for the next morning: someone must have got it out, set it up, pumped it. Suspension is not fitted on a whim. He does it on a whim, according to Sporza: he decided on Friday, on the way back from the team presentation. “When I came back from the team presentation, I said: come on. I’m going to motivate myself to do it,” he told Sporza.
Motivating myself, where I work, means bleeding the brakes. It takes a quarter of an hour and nobody applauds.
He also says he is doing it with Bruno Armirail and that they will have some fun. That, I understand. Riding as a pair is already half a set-up: one holds the bike, one tightens.
A Monument and a mountain bike in the same weekend, that’s two team cars. I’d say sir to both mechanics.
He was due back in Nice that same evening. Between Nice and Fréjus there is a night. I know what you do with a night and a workstand. I won’t say what pressure he rides at, I don’t know it. I’ll go and check the club’s mountain bikes, then.
It’s true, we checked: Sporza · Wielrennen.
