A star is born. Frenchman Seixas wins the Giro di Lombardia

Et voilà: perhaps this is it. A new star has been born in the cycling firmament. His name is Paul Seixas, he is French, he has just turned 20 (on 24 September) and, by winning the Giro di Lombardia – the season’s final Monument – he has achieved a feat within a feat, because no one, before him had ever won, at such a young age, this historic race, now in its 120th edition.

A new star is rising – that of the ‘child prodigy’ – who, one day, who knows, might even outshine the dazzling star of Tadej Pogacar, the current undisputed champion.

The Frenchman cruised to a commanding victory, leaving all the top riders behind on the gruelling slopes of the Cittiglio, the penultimate climb some 19 kilometres from the finish line in Como. It was an impressive surge that saw the riders at the front of the peloton drop one by one. Starting with the Belgian Evenepoel, the hot favourite going into the race, who eventually finished only fourth, a minute and 20 seconds behind. The Frenchman’s attack left all the big names in modern cycling in its wake, from the Mexican Alex Del Toro, another young star, to the American Brandon McNulty, the recent world champion in Montreal.

Everyone was left behind, all outmanoeuvred by Seixas’s sharp surge – he has already finished fourth in this year’s Tour de France and second in Liège – behind the ever-present Pogacar, winner of the last five editions of the Lombardia.

Behind the Frenchman, some fifty seconds back, was the Spaniard Enric Mas, winner of the last Vuelta. In third place was Giulio Ciccone from Abruzzo, who did well to make it onto the podium, but wasn’t quite brilliant enough to respond to Seixas’s attack. It has been a somewhat mixed year for Ciccone, with ten podium finishes but not a single victory. He came close to victory at the last European Championships, where he was beaten by Evenepoel by just three millimetres. Yet never has a silver medal tasted so bitter. Despite the protests and an appeal to the European Cycling Federation, the victory remained with the Belgian. A shame, because the rider from Abruzzo – who next year, after eight years, will leave Lidl-Trek for Pinarello – was one of the most outstanding Italians of 2026. Before the advent of the Euro, one might have said “he’s a cent short of a lira”, meaning he was just a hair’s breadth away from perfection. In any case, securing a podium place – in a cycling scene as lacking in results as ours – is already an excellent achievement.