Paris (France) (AFP) - French teenage prodigy Paul Seixas announced on Monday that he will ride the Tour de France in July for the first time, raising hopes of a first home winner in more than four decades.

No Frenchman has won the Tour since Bernard Hinault did so for a record-equalling fifth time in 1985.

“It is my childhood dream, something I’ve often dreamed about and now it’s so close,” Seixas said in a statement published by his Decathlon CMA CGM team.

The 19-year-old has been in stunning form this season, winning seven races and pushing all-time great Tadej Pogacar close in the Liege-Bastogne-Liege Monument one-day classic a week ago.

Seixas has ridden two week-long stage races and four one-day classics this season, and has not finished below second.

He insisted that he is not planning to ride the Tour just to gain experience.

“My results since the start of the season have given me a lot of confidence – I feel ready and I will have ambitious objectives,” he added.

He will be the youngest rider to start a Tour in 89 years when the Grand Boucle begins in Barcelona on July 4.

In a video posted to social media by Decathlon, he is shown visiting his grandparents in the eastern Haut-Savoie region near his home in Lyon.

“I’ve come here to announce to you something special, I have a race in July,” he tells his grandparents, before they guess that he is talking about the Tour.

Seixas’s potential participation in the sport’s most prestigious race has been the subject of much speculation, which has only intensified with his performances.

“He has had a remarkable start to the season and is already one of the best riders in the world,” his team boss Dominique Serieys said.

- Pogacar ‘destroys his rivals’ -

Many experts believe it is too soon for Seixas to tackle the 3,333-kilometre (2,069 mile), three-week race, which includes eight mountain stages, including five summit finishes.

It will be his first grand tour and the first time he has tackled a race longer than eight days.

But he has excelled in every other challenge put before him this season.

“If he’s not ready, then who is ready?” his Belgian team-mate Oliver Naesen told Cyclingnews last month.

“He’s 100 percent ready to go to the Tour.”

But Marc Madiot, the sporting director of rival French team Groupama-FDJ United, believes it would be unwise for the young star to compete so soon.

“We underestimate what the Tour de France is,” he told RMC radio station on Sunday.

“When you ride the Tour de France… you enter into a washing machine which wears you down, which devours you day after day,” he added.

And in four-time winner Pogacar, Seixas will be up against “someone who destroys his rivals mentally one after another, even his own team-mates.”

- Ahead of Pogacar -

Seixas’s second season as a professional has been astonishing.

He began by finishing second in the Tour of the Algarve before winning the Ardeche Classic.

He was second to Pogacar at Strade Bianche, won the Tour of the Basque Country and then Fleche Wallonne, before finishing second in Liege.

He also won one stage at the Tour of the Algarve and three in the Basque Country.

At World Tour level he has won both a one-day classic and a stage race already.

World champion Pogacar was 20 before he won a World Tour stage race and 22 before he won a one-day classic at that level.

Seixas is even ahead of Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel, who won a World Tour one-day classic at 19 but did not win a stage race at that level until the following year.

Pogacar finished third in his first Grand Tour, the 2019 Vuelta a Espana, but won the Tour de France at the first attempt the following year.

Evenepoel failed to finish his first Grand Tour, the 2021 Giro d’Italia, but like Pogacar, won his second, the 2022 Vuelta.