Benoot critical of communication after Seixas's stage 2 puncture at the Tour
After the opening TTT, the next big test for youngster Paul Seixas and his team Decathlon-CMA CGM was the first road stage of his debut Tour de France. The 19-year-old Frenchman finished ninth in Barcelona, losing just three seconds to the big GC favourites, and that was after an unfortunately-timed chase back after a puncture.
Teammate Tiesj Benoot was the last man put to work for Seixas on the final climb up to the Montjuïc castle, but as well as telling media he had "really good legs", the Belgian reflected on his own team's less-than-optimal management of his young leader's mechanical situation.
"The communication with the car was difficult,” Benoot told Sporza after stage 2. “They did not immediately understand that Paul wanted another bike. First he changed with Aurélien [Paret-Peintre], then he wanted his own bike. It took too long before the car understood...
"It is 2026 and there is still no proper system to communicate,” he added, pointing to a peloton-wide issue with patchy radios. “We can almost live on the moon, but we still can’t communicate in a race. It is sad."
Seixas also spoke of comms issues after the stage, telling L'Équipe that he'd tried to convey he wasn't ready to attaxk, but the team thought he'd said otherwise: "I was trying to tell them I wasn’t quite ready to attack, but the sports director didn’t understand. He thought I was at 100%, so he sent Tiesj on the attack, even though I hadn’t planned to attack. In the end, my legs felt better than I’d thought, but I’d rather save some energy for later.”
