r/tourdefrance

1. Not just a prodigy anymore

Paul Seixas was hearing a lot lately, not exactly negative, but simply words that he is still just a future talent, that he still has a lot of time ahead, that he still needs to work a lot. And mainly his Tour de France shaped this view, but he was not 100% here. Definitely not.

And then something like the Il Lombardia result came and people were surprised. About everything. About the final result or simply about how he rode everything off their wheel. But whoever has seen Liege could not have been surprised. He has all-time talent.

2. Another off day

Remco was phenomenal at the Tour. And after that, he sat to himself, only the highest ambitions in autumn, and called it also ‘Project Canada’. But his autumn was strange. Very strange.

Off-days followed some phenomenal performances like. And he always came with no excuses and a straight answer: ‘I was simply not good enough.’ And now it is up to the Red Bull team to solve this problem.

3. Del Toro questionable performance

One of the biggest favourites. 28th place, 5 minutes down and not a word about him in the Lombardia article on the UAE website.

He said it clearly before the race that he has knee problems. And he also didn’t know why. He said that his position, bike, and shoes are the same, but he feels discomfort. Hopefully this won’t become a serious problem in the future, because currently it is.

4. McNulty rides like a world champion

No wins so far (he will have one more chance at Veneto Classic), but I am genuinely impressed by how McNulty rides. He attacks, he tries to follow the biggest stars and he also delivers some pretty nice results. Well, 5th place at Lombardia is pretty good. His best ever Monument result.

If he rides this way and this strongly, I can see him definitely winning at least one race in the rainbow stripes. My biggest wish would be a Tour stage which is the most important thing he misses in his palmares.

5. Good to see riders had enough

The flag was waved and nobody moved. Remco stood with arms crossed in his new European Champs jersey and I could feel his aura all the way to my home.

Journalist Daniel Benson then revealed that it was the initiative of Ben Healy and Tom Pidcock who helped mobilise the peloton through the WhatsApp group.

And one thing about it, I won’t hide I was pretty disappointed not all stars shared this message, and the excuse that that rider is not using social media or that he is not riding at these races shouldn’t be an excuse.

6. Another Seixas future rumours

Immediately after the Lombardia there came again the news, with quotes from Gianetti that there was a contact and that “If he asks to come to us, I wouldn’t say no.” and also that Visma is interested.

I said many times that what I would like to see the most is him staying where he is. At home in Decathlon. Simply him in Visma or mainly in the UAE gives me terrible vibes. And I believe he also wants to beat Pogačar and Vingegaard on the opposite team, not to join them.

7. This racing also belongs to GrandTours

In Lombardia we again saw some premium racing. And this happens because there is endurance involved.

I feel like GrandTours in the last years have gone in a bad way. They are trying to make the race the hardest possible overall and missing the balance. We need to have pure flat stages to let riders recover, but also long pure TTs or two time trials and mainly extremely long hard mountain stages. Because this endurance racing brings pure racing.

📷: ilciclistafotografo

Paris-Tours ran today, and I’d bet most cycling fans didn’t notice. That’s a shame, because it was a good one.

Per Strand Hagenes won for Visma-Lease a Bike. He jumped out of an 11-rider group inside the last kilometer and held it to the line by two seconds. Jasper Stuyven was second and Hagenes’s teammate Christophe Laporte took third. Having a former winner like Laporte sitting in that group probably made everyone else hesitate, and a moment’s hesitation was all Hagenes needed.

The course is better than its reputation. It starts in Chartres these days, not Paris, and the first 145 km are flat and forgettable. The last 70 km are something else: nine short climbs and ten gravel tracks through the vineyards east of Tours, about 10.5 km of dirt in all. After the last climb there’s a flat run into town, long enough for a chase to get organized. Today it delivered. Tim Merlier punctured, a big crash caught Arnaud De Lie and Dorian Godon, and Jenno Berckmoes split the field with 25 km to go. Pierre Gautherat went solo with 20 km left and was only caught in the final kilometers.

So why does nobody talk about it? Look at the date. It comes the day after Il Lombardia, where 20-year-old Paul Seixas just became the youngest winner ever, so that’s the story of the weekend. Worlds are over, half the peloton is already on vacation, and the riders who do show up have been racing since February. It’s also a ProSeries race, not WorldTour, so the big teams don’t have to send their best.

This race dates back to 1896. Give that finale a weekend of its own, or a spot on the calendar when the classics riders are fresh, and I think people would treat it like the classic it is. In mid-October, most fans catch the highlights on Monday, if at all.

I built a portable hypoxia device because altitude camps and tents were out of reach for me. Beta users now include national road/gravel/and mtb champions, a recently crowned world road champ, and 2026 Tour de France riders. I’m David the founder of HEPOX, an engineer and a former pro domestic road cyclist.

It lowers inspired oxygen while you sit at rest in short/daily sessions and is adjusted to reach a target hypoxia zone utilizing an oximeter to stimulate the adaptive affects associated with acclimation. Athlete use is encouraging; our 18 day pilot study at CU-Boulder was on a women's team training for the Tour de France Femmes is still unpublished but has an encouraging preliminary performance benefits in the metrics we measured. In addition to a Tour de France Femmes team using HEPOX, a few men's riders also had HEPOX throughout the Tour de France in 2026. I’m raising our first round to develop Gen 2 with sensing, session tracking, acclimation identification, and further validation.

I am pursuing future manufacturing capabilities. But what would you need to see (from evidence, case-studies, or rider usage) before that felt worth it or before mainstream non-pro riders would use it? What other endurance and non-endurance related athletes might be a primary market?

The current beta device is $400 with one filter; replacement filters are $30. The device is at hepoxtech.com if you want to look at the design.

Feel free to ask any questions about this device, the protocols we're see that are most effective, or where we think the science is going next!

A compact evidence brief on the data behind the device and intermittent hypoxia shows that the main variables behind effective intermittent hypoxia use are hypoxia severity, exposure time, and frequency of exposures:

• Wojan 2021: experiments with six participants each compared brief protocols targeting 80% arterial oxygen saturation. Eight four-minute bouts increased EPO; five-minute bouts did not. This was a small acute physiology study, not a HEPOX trial or a test of race performance.
• Nagel 2020: 19 participants received hypoxia or normoxia. One session of five four-minute bouts targeting 90% saturation did not significantly increase EPO or hemoglobin mass.
• Harding 2025: four days of fifteen 90 second hypoxic intervals did not increase hemoglobin mass; a separate group showed no significant acute EPO increase. Repetition and strong hypoxia therefore do not guarantee a blood response. This is a published study separate from the HEPOX athlete pilot.

Source: https://www.cyclingnews.com/pro-cycling/racing/taylor-phinney-takes-big-step-in-comeback-as-he-makes-usa-cycling-squad-for-uci-track-world-championships/