Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, with her decade of sustained success and 15 world titles across four different disciplines, is one of cycling’s – men’s and women’s – most complete and versatile bike riders. Only the great Marianne Vos, her former teammate and occasional rival, can surpass her in breadth of achievements. And now, as the reigning Olympic mountain bike champion and 10 years on from when she was simultaneously world champion on the road, in cyclocross and MTB, Ferrand-Prévot is chasing the result that will immortalise her: becoming the first Frenchwoman to win the reborn Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
“I signed for three years,” she says about her move to Visma-Lease a Bike from Ineos Grenadiers for whom she competed in mountain biking since 2023, “and during these three years I really want to be as best as I possibly can be to try to win the Tour de France.” Thirty-three in February, three years older than reigning champion Kasia Niewiadoma and five years Demi Vollering’s senior, Ferrand-Prévot is unperturbed by her age, and neither by the fact that she hasn’t raced a stage race since 2018, and no Grand Tour since she finished sixth at the 2015 Giro d’Italia, a year after she was second to Vos in the same race.
“Because I chose a good team,” she answers when asked why she’s confident of fulfilling her latest dream. “I know I have to work hard and that I have strong competition, but when I see my power data, I know I am able to be a good road rider. It’s just a matter of spending time training with my teammates, racing in the bunch, also studying races and just getting back to road cycling.”
PFP, as she has come to be known, has been focused on her off-road pursuits for most of the past decade – she became the first women’s gravel world champion in 2022, adding yet another string to her bow. But after winning mountain bike gold in her home Olympics at Paris 2024, she knew the time was right to return to the road, the discipline she excelled in in 2014, winning La Flèche Wallonne – “that is one of my best memories on the bike,” she says – national road and time trial titles, and most memorably the Road Race World Championships. “I didn’t want to do one more [Olympic] cycle until the next Olympics, the same races and training, but I’m still not tired of cycling – I still want to race my bike,” she explains. “It was a good moment for me to switch towards road cycling…