Paul’s Here

I like to think of myself as quite the optimist, which explains a career-long, pan-sport fascination with prospects, prodigies, and up-and-comers of all sorts. The future of every sport is out there materializing, in the form of legions of children rising to displace and cast aside their elders. The passage of time guarantees this, though that certainty of outcome is not matched by certainty of identity. Oftentimes, the pressure on a young athlete of being touted as the Next Big Thing is enough to guarantee that ascension never happens, putting the press in the curious position of simultaneously lauding a prospects' accomplishments and cautioning the public against drawing subsequent conclusions. Usually, anyway. Sometimes an athlete comes along with such undeniable talent and spark that any observer is forced to feel the inevitable gravity of a star being born. Which brings us to Paul Seixas, who is making it impossible to use the future tense. When we last checked in on Seixas six weeks ago, he was posting an impressive slew of results in the shoulder seasons of the cycling calendar. It is nice to win the Faun-Ardeche Classic and a stage at the Volta Ao Algarve, but nobody is targeting those races; while performing well there and in the preceding autumn classics is impressive prospect stuff, it's not necessarily world-bestriding mega-talent stuff. In other words, checking in then was a hedge of sorts: a preliminary survey of Seixas's situation before he started contesting (and potentially losing) races that mattered. Though I hoped otherwise, I thought there would be little to report until July.