Finding somebody who can push Tadej Pogacar in a Grand Tour has become cycling’s most stubborn parlour game. Jonas Vingegaard aside, the list of credible challengers has shrunk rather than grown. So when the manager who personally signed France’s biggest prospect in a generation puts a rider on it, it carries more weight than the usual hype.

Vincent Lavenu is that manager. The former AG2R and Decathlon team boss left the squad in 2024 after more than two decades building it, and now runs the women’s project Ma Petite Entreprise. He is also the man who put a teenage Paul Seixas on contract when the rider was still a cadet.

“Next year, he’s going to give Pogacar a run for his money,” Lavenu told Cyclism’Actu. “Will he be capable of beating him in a Grand Tour? That’s difficult to say.”

Fourth at the Tour, second to Pogacar twice

The reason the claim does not sound hollow is the season Seixas has just produced. The 20-year-old Frenchman finished fourth at the 2026 Tour de France on debut, 11:56 behind Pogacar and 2:14 off the podium, while carrying the full weight of French expectation for three weeks.

Read also: Toto Wolff takes swipe at MotoGP riders who ‘know nothing’ about geopolitics

He also won his first WorldTour stage race at the Tour of the Basque Country in April, taking the overall plus three stages, and added La Flèche Wallonne. In October he won Il Lombardia.

Where he met Pogacar head-on, he was the only rider in the same postcode. Seixas finished second to the Slovenian at both Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, each time the closest challenger on the road.

A one-week race is not a Grand Tour

Lavenu’s framing matters because a one-week stage race and a classic are not a three-week Grand Tour. Pogacar has turned the second week of July into a personal procession, and nobody has solved that problem since Vingegaard last did in 2023. A fourth place at 11:56 is a remarkable debut, but it is also roughly 24 seconds a day of unanswered time trial.

Seixas is contracted to Decathlon CMA CGM, the team Lavenu built and no longer runs. His 2027 programme has not been announced. Pogacar, who extended his dominance in 2026, has not confirmed which Grand Tours he will target either.

Read also: Real Madrid could re-sign €45m Spain star for just €9m after first international call-up

Read also: Sir Alex Ferguson set for new Sky Sports documentary exploring life beyond Manchester United