"Next year will be excellent": Pauline Ferrand-Prévot aims for an even greater 2026 campaign

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot made an ambitious move ahead of the 2025 season, putting her overly successful mountain bike career on hold. Instead, she committed to road racing for next three seasons with a clear goal in mind: to win the Tour de France Femmes with Visma | Lease a Bike. With her tremendous talent, it certainly wasn't impossible. But coming back to road racing after seven years, there were little expectations from her debut season. And it definitely didn't seem likely she would go on to immediately fulfill her goal on first attempt.

"I learned a lot last year," Ferrand-Prevot said on the Inside the Beehive podcast.

In what was meant as a learning year for the Frenchwoman coming back to road racing after nearly a decade turned out to be a season where she won Paris-Roubaix and later the Tour de France - her major goal with this road comeback. And Ferrand-Prevot promises that she's only getting started:

"I feel that next year will be excellent for me because I learned so much last year that I now know what I need to do, and I can simply put what I learned last year into practice."

Since the former world champion (2014) has already ticked off her biggest goal, Ferrand-Prevot can now take a closer look at some other interesting races she would like to win during her next two seasons with Visma | Lease a Bike.

"I want to try to win the Tour of Flanders and Liège," she lists two races that are high up on her bucket list.

Despite those big results, Ferrand-Prévot ranked only 13th on the yearly UCI ranking. That was mainly down to her fluctuating level at some points of the year. Improving in that aspect will be another of her objectives: "I also sincerely believe that I can be more consistent throughout the season. I would like to win more classic races, and I also want to try to win the Tour de France again and become world champion next year," she concludes.