France entrusts itself to a 19-year-old kid in this Tour

Carcassonne welcomes the crowd that has come to see the start of the fourth stage of the Tour with that blast of heat you feel when you open the oven to take out cannelloni. Enduring the heatwave is worth it because the French spectator this year has eyes only for Paul Seixas (on French radio they pronounce it secsàs ), the cyclist who at nineteen years old has stood up to Pogacar before the French race and who has the pressure of an entire country to win a Tour that has eluded them since 1985, when Bernard Hinault achieved the last victory. "He is very young, but he is a strong cyclist. He has many options to fight for the Tour de France, but I don't know if this is his Tour. Maybe next year," says one of the thousands of French spectators who have come to the Occitan city to ARA, under the shade. "We hope he can win one or two stages," he adds. His brother says he hopes he doesn't suffer the same fate as Thibaut Pinot, who with three Tour stages under his belt suffered pressure that tore him apart: "Let's hope Seixas takes it easier and can be like Anquetil in the past and be the great French cyclist of this new era".