FRENCH THE PRESS / AFP
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot here on April 12, 2025.
CYCLISM-We are on July 28, 2024. When Pauline Ferrand-Prévot engages on the cross-country test of the Paris Olympics, it is a huge weight that weighs on her shoulders. The Olympic title is all that it lacks on this discipline, after its failures in Tokyo and Rio. But the French does not feel the pressure that day. Ultra-favorite, she leaves alone in mind after only a few rounds of racing. Its competitors will never see her again: here she is Olympic gold medalist, in front of her audience.
From the evening of her victory, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot already has a goal in mind. Goodbye mountain biking, where she won everything. Meet it on road cycling, with a mission: “Try to win the Tour [de France] These next seasons. »» This Saturday, August 2, in the terrible percentages of the Col de la Madeleine, the scenario was more or less the same as that at the Olympic Circuit of Elancourt de MTV a year earlier: that of a Pauline Ferrand-Prévot largely above the lot, coming to win with 1’45 ahead of her runner-up, the Australian Sarah Gigante.
This Sunday, August 3, on the last stage of this female Tour de France, the French superstar finished the work by finishing first in the stage. At 33, in front of the eyes of her loved ones just as a fan of cycling and who accompany her by the roadside, she added a first large loop in a cupboard with already extraordinary trophies.
A champion on all disciplines
Because winning a Tour de France represents, for many runners, the feat of a career. For Pauline Ferrand-Prévot too, she who confided this Saturday to realize “A little girl’s dream” By carrying the yellow jersey for the first time. But this victory at the Tour de France comes to garnish an already monumental record, acquired on all disciplines of the bicycle.
It is in fact mainly on mountain bike that Pauline Ferrand-Prévot shone, with 11 titles of world champion in cross-country, including 9 individually, and therefore an Olympic title in Paris. It is also on this discipline that the native of Reims flourishes the most on the bicycle: more movement, more adrenaline, more spectacle.
However, the Frenchwoman did not discover road cycling with this edition of the Tour de France. In 2010, at 17, she became world champion on the road in junior, before materializing in 2014 with a title of elite world champion.
In 2015, at only 23 years old, she then succeeded in a feat that no one else accomplished, among women as in men: at the same time hold the titles of world champion on the road, mountain biking … and cyclo-cross, another discipline of bicycle, even more technical and rapid than mountain biking.
“It’s no longer a challenge”
At the end of 2019, after a few disappointments, but above all physical seeds and demotivation around this discipline, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot announced to leave cycling on road. “I decided to say goodbye to full -time road cycling. I do not say that I will never do it again, but I can say that it is the discipline that I prefer the least ”, she explained then. She then garnished her mountain bike list, with countless trophies, before experiencing a huge disappointment at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, widely caught in Paris in 2024.
It is therefore with the feeling of having won everything that Pauline Ferrand-Prévot announced after the Paris Olympics his return to road cycling, with a great challenge: to win the Tour de France, whose organization as it is only 2022. “Games had become an obsession. Bringing back this gold medal … If I hadn’t had it, I would have felt like I did not do everything I wanted to achieve. The tour is more a little girl’s dream, something I want to conquer. If I get there, it’s great, and if I can’t do it, it will not be the end of the world ”she entrusted to The team before the start of the Tour de France.
It must also be said that the road bike has changed a lot since its departure and has opened up to women. On April 12, 2025, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot thus won the very prestigious Paris-Roubaix race for the first time and its formidable cobblestones, whose female declination only dates from 2020. The victory in its first round of France, opened since 2021 to women in a modernized version, completed it among the largest French athletes in history.