Bookmakers were thrown into panic in April when a French teenager won three stages and the overall at Itzulia Basque Country. They might not have heard of him, but at that moment, Decathlon CMA CGM's 19-year-old wonderkid Paul Seixas became the youngest rider in history to win a World Tour stage race – presenting the bookies with a problem. Could this upstart kid win the Tour de France? Too terrified to rule it out, they slashed Seixas's odds to 5/1, making him joint second-favourite, with two-time champion Jonas Vingegaard, to win the world's biggest race.
Surely the bookies were being overcautious. Not since 1937 has a rider younger than Seixas started the Tour, let alone won it. Besides, at the time of Itzulia, the Frenchman hadn't even committed to making his Tour debut – that would come a month later, with a social media video of him breaking the news to his grandparents.
