Well, the time is finally here. It’s been coming for over a year now, but it can be avoided no longer. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot is about to race her last mountain bike race.
The Olympic champion and many-time world champion will end her mountain bike career next weekend at 2024 world championships. Whether she keeps the rainbow jersey for another year, adding to her 12 elite world titles across disciplines, or hands over the crown remains to be seen. If she does, it would see her take her last elite XCO title at the same Andorran venue where she earned her first.
This is, of course, not the end of Ferrand-Prévot’s career. Just her career on dirt. The Frenchwoman is returning to the road after several years of focusing on mountain biking. That narrowing of scope from her early multi-disciplinary days (including her historic XC-CX-Road world championship year) was in service of one goal: winning the Olympic gold medal. Having achieved that last month at the Paris Games, PFP is moving on.
On Friday, Ferrand-Prévot announced that she will not finish out the World Cup season when it returns to North America. The last two spots are the iconic Mont-Sainte-Anne venue and a new venue (or very old venue) at Lake Placid in the U.S.A. Instead, she will end her season at world championships.
From there Ferrand-Prévot will return to racing on the road. Somewhat ironically, she will leave one of the most powerful and well-funded road teams when she does. With INEOS, her current home, not having a women’s squad and apparently not having much interest in one, either, Ferrand-Prévot has found a more welcoming home at Visma-Lease a Bike for 2025 and onward.
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Canadian Cycling Magazine…