Second, the Frenchwoman avoided all the traps and is only 18 seconds from the yellow jersey before the first mountain stage.
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“I feel good”. The days follow one another and look alike for Pauline Ferrand-Prévôt on the Tour de France women. One of the seven runners who played the win in Guéret on Wednesday July 30, the Frenchwoman once again showed that she was at the level of the best. After the fifth stage, “PFP” is second in the general classification 18 seconds from Kim Le Court. A real quiet strength, she would almost make us forget that she only finds the peloton this year after six years without devoting herself to her road career.
The Paris 2024 Olympic champion in Cross-Country mountain biking has not played the slightest false note since the big departure from Brittany. His first day of racing on the Tour almost ended with a legendary victory in Plumelec, but the Rémoise played him collective by offering the bouquet to his teammate Marianne Vos. As if it was not necessary to show his strength too much to the whole competition. She herself was very measured on her performance. “I am very happy with my legs”she just said that day when she had made the hole without really doing it on purpose.
“I am happy to be able to finish in this group of leaders, to continue my little way”she added Wednesday in Guéret, almost in the euphemism. At the microphone of France Télévisions, in the morning, she announced that she would work for Marianne Vos, then carrying the yellow jersey. At the end, it was she who shone, taking four seconds of bonus in the Maupuy, then scribble with half a vollering, Kim the Court, Katarzyna Niewiadoma and the rest of the gratin from the peloton to the sprint (5th in the stage).
In the peloton, no one is fooled. The day before the arrival, its sharpening was greatly speaking. “I have never seen it with the cheeks so dug”at the same time noticed an ambitious team attaché and a journalist that day. “I’m lighter than classics. When I have a goal, I like to have the ideal weight when you have to. I don’t like being too thin for nothing. It’s not healthy”she explained three days earlier at a press conference.
The goal, precisely, is to be efficient in the high mountains. There is still a stranger. On her only test of the season, not very representative because carried out in January, Pauline Ferrand-Prévôt had conceded more than two minutes in the ascent of Jebel Hafeet on the turn of the United Arab Emirates. She then had to show up on the Vuelta but had abandoned because of a recalcitrant ankle and an insufficient form. “PFP” then took rest and started a large block of preparation at altitude, including a passage to Tignes.
In this Tour de France women which offers a double mountain ration, with four stages instead of two last year, it will be entitled to a first test on Thursday between Clermont and Ambert. Then come the Alps, the real justice of the peace of this edition. “PFP” has already warned that if she did not take it this year, it would not be “Not the end of the world” Since she gives herself three years to get there. But in the light of these first five days of racing, there is no reason to dismiss it from the title race.
