|
Date of birth |
February 10, 1992 |
|
Nationality |
French |
|
Born |
Reims |
|
Nickname |
PFP |
|
Height |
1.65m |
|
Weight |
53kg |
|
Resides |
Monaco / Andorra |
|
Partner |
Dylan van Baarle |
|
Turned pro |
2012 |
|
Team |
Visma-Lease a Bike |
|
Bike |
Cervélo |
|
UCI wins |
15 |
|
Stage race wins |
2 |
|
Grand Tour stage wins |
2 |
|
|
@paulineferrandprevot |
‘Don’t call it a comeback’, as the saying goes – and never could it be more apt than in the case of the new queen of the peloton, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot.
The writing was on the wall – or at least in the French rider’s wheel marks. Fat, knobbly wheel marks dusted with the desiccated soil of an untouchable Olympic mountain bike victory. She had never gone away – she was just a little out of sight for a while.
Only six races in to her return to the pro road peloton this year she astounded onlookers with a dominant solo victory in one of the hardest events on the calendar – Paris-Roubaix Femmes.
And now, anyone who thought she might have simply got lucky with one good ride, was silenced emphatically by the Frenchwoman on the final two mountainous days of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, after she took a brace of solo stage wins – the latter wearing yellow to seal the overall victory.
Let’s find out a little more about the woman who ended 36 years of French hurt at the Tour.
(Image credit: Getty)
1. Success was on the cards from an early age for Ferrand-Prévot, who won four national titles across road and MTB when she was still a youth rider.
2. Her first sport had been figure skating, with her parents initially reluctant to let her take up cycling. But she persuaded them to let her join a club in her home town of Reims – after which there was no looking back.
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3. In 2015 she achieved a historic triple World Championships haul – road, cyclo-cross and mountain bike.
4. Of those three, her mountain biking feats make up the biggest part of her palmarès. She has 14 MTB world titles spanning, cross-country, marathon, short track and team relay.
5. A veteran of four Olympic Games, Ferrand-Prévot has competed both on and off-road over the years but medalled only once, winning MTB XCO gold at last year’s Paris Games.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
6. At the other end of the Olympic spectrum, she almost gave up bike racing after Rio 2016, having quit the MTB race and finishing well down in the road race after an injury-hit season.
7. Instead, she bought herself a bulldog pup that she christened Rio, who lifted her spirits and helped her to continue.
8. She has spent the last five seasons concentrating on the mountain bike – to great effect – but returned to the road this season. To equally great – if not greater – effect, as we saw in France.
9. In 2023/24 she rode with the Ineos Grenadiers team, who supported her in her attempt to win at the Olympics. However she left because the team’s lack of plans to field a women’s road team did not fit with her desire to return to road racing.
10. Ferrand-Prévot is in a relationship with men’s WorldTour pro Dylan Van Baarle. Like ‘PFP’ he is a former Paris-Roubaix winner (2022) and rides for the Visma-Lease a Bike team.
11. She was yellow-carded after Milan San Remo this year for irregular sprinting.
12. A strong family background in cycling meant it was almost predestined that ‘PFP’, as she is known, would take to two wheels. Her father ran a bike shop and her mother a cycling school.
13. On top of that, her uncle, Ludovic Dubau, is a former mountain biking champion, winning the French national championship in 1994.
14. Her younger sister Axelle is also a successful bike racer. A veteran of many of the major Classics races and more, she has more recently taken to gravel racing, and placed second at this year’s Traka event and taking podium places in the Gravel World Series events.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
15. She is an outspoken advocate for women’s competition and explained that when she was very young she told her mum that she wanted to be a boy so that she could ride the Tour de France. Times have changed.
16. She has no problem mixing up disciplines, saying that they can complement each other and adding: “I don’t like monotony”.
17. As well as a base in Monaco, Ferrand-Prévot has a place in Andorra, which she says is perfect for training for big, mountainous races. The Tour de France Femmes, for example…
18. On top of all her scientific success, she has a “scientific” degree, and has also completed further studies in physiotherapy.
19. The first pro road team she joined was Dutch team Rabobank-Liv, where she found herself under the wing of her cycling hero Marianne Vos – who is once again a team-mate this year at Visma-Lease a Bike.
20. She has a tattoo that reads ‘Life is a joke’ (in English) on the back of her neck. It’s a reminder, she says, not to take anything too seriously.
21. She has been criticised on social media for finding what she describes as the “limit” when it comes to weight loss in preparation for the Tour de France Femmes. But she said: “I don’t want to stay like this because I know it’s not 100% healthy, but we also had a good plan with the nutritionist in the team and everything is in control.”
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