We are writing Sept. 27, 2014, ten years to the day. A 22-year-old Frenchwoman won the World Road Cycling Championship in Ponferrada, named Pauline Ferrand-Prévot. Defending champion Marianne Vos is overtaken just before the finish and ultimately ends up finishing in tenth place. Next year, the two will ride together again at Visma | Lease a Bike, but first, they will take on each other at the World Championships on Saturday.
Ferrand-Prévot had become world champion on the road with the juniors in 2010 and made her pro debut for Rabobank in 2012, at the same time as Roxane Knetemann and the then 18-year-old top talent Thalita de Jong. Annemiek van Vleuten and leading lady Vos also cycled for the banking team, which saw Vos become Olympic and world champion that year.
At the time, the Frenchwoman finished eighth at the London Games and finally made her definitive breakthrough in 2014 by winning the Flèche Wallonne. Later that year, she also became French champion, thus world champion, by holding off Lisa Brennauer and Emma Johansson in Ponferrada, Spain. That would not be the only World Championship she would win, as she became global cyclocross and mountain bike champion in 2015. In doing so, she became the first ever to hold the three titles.
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Three times is a charm for Férrand-Prevot at Olympics
As road world champion, she won a stage at the Giro and became the French champion, while cross-country racing was pretty much scaled down with the prospect of the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Games. That Brazilian double - road and mountain bike - ended in a fiasco, however, after which she decided to switch to Canyon/SRAM in 2017 after a lesser year at Rabobank. There, too, things didn't immediately want to work out in the years that followed, where a cause was finally found in 2019: a narrowing of the femoral artery, which she underwent surgery for in the spring of that year.
At the same time as that surgery, she announced that she would focus on mountain biking for the time being, specifically the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games, which ended up being held one year later because of the coronavirus. Ferrand-Prévot headed there as a top favorite and now three-time world champion, but partly due to a flat tire, she didn't get further than place ten.
In 2022, she became world champion again (also on gravel, title number four in the collection), and then in 2023, she became the first woman ever to switch to INEOS Grenadiers. For the British team, she also rode some cross country again but still mainly kept the Games as a prospect. In the build-up to Paris, she won the last tests in Glasgow (World Championships 2023) and Romania 2024), after which the Games in her own country proved right up her alley. Finally, at last, that Olympic dream had been fulfilled.
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Ferrand-Prévot goes for Tour de France dream at Visma | Lease a Bike
With that, she ticked off her career goal, but like a champion, a new one was already looming. Women's road cycling has undergone a significant metamorphosis in its absence, partly due to the arrival of the Tour de France Femmes. With Dylan van Baarle as a partner, Visma | Lease a Bike was quickly chosen to take on that ambition.
"Last winter, I was thinking about my future after the Olympics. I was pursuing an Olympic medal in mountain biking for twelve years. I have now achieved that goal. I think it's time for a new challenge in cycling. The choice for Team Visma | Lease a Bike Women was obvious. 'The way of working and the professional framework of the team appeals to me enormously," Ferrand-Prévot wrote in her announcement.
"Women's cycling has gone through a big evolution since I left the sport, but I can't wait to return to the peloton. With the team's support, I can show great things again. I am, therefore, enormously motivated. The Tour de France Femmes is a race I want to win," she was clear.
She returns on Saturday, exactly ten years and one day after her world title. And not in a small race, but at the World Championships in Zurich. Instead of an hour and a half's effort on a mountain bike, we are talking about a course of about four hours. Ferrand-Prévot went to Andorra with her friend, who dropped out of the Vuelta, to avoid making a mistake. There, she trained with Robert Gesink, among others.
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Ferrand-Prévot is already in full transition from mountain bike star to road racer
Those who follow Ferrand-Prévot on Instagram got an excellent insight into her retraining from mountain biker to road racer. "We spent five weeks in Andorra to finish 2024 on a good note. I'm still riding two more races (in addition to the World Road Championships and the World Gravel Championships, ed.), but everything is a bonus. Most of all, I enjoyed the hours on the bike, the hard training, and the fact that I could share this with the person I love most," she wrote alongside a photo of herself and Van Baarle.
Other notable things were the love she seemed to declare almost daily now to meals presented by the Foodcoach app, and even goofy photos of "team leader" Van Baarle. Only to add just before leaving for Zurich, "It's not easy to become a road racer (again)," we read on social media.
Well, Saturday is the World Championships in Zurich. What can we expect from the dark horse there? "In any case, I am happy with my selection. Ten years after Ponferrada, I intend to go for the World Championship title with one of the Françaises. Still, this race will also teach me much about what I need to work on over the winter toward my next goal: trying to win the Tour," Ferrand-Prevot said.
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