Pauline Ferrand-Prévot will join Team Visma | Lease a Bike Women in 2025. The Olympic mountain bike champion returns to road cycling with a clear goal in mind: to win the Tour de France Femmes. She will have at least three opportunities as she has agreed to a deal that runs through 2027.
Despite her off-road palmares, Ferrand-Prévot won't be a new face in the road peloton either. Before making the switch to full-time mountain biking, she became the world champion in 2014. At the age of 22. In the following years she has been a prominent name in both classics and general classifications before turning her full attention to MTB. After five world titles and an Olympic gold medal, she now aims to fulfill also her road dreams.
"Last winter, I was thinking about my future after the Olympics. I had been chasing an Olympic medal in mountain biking for 12 years. I have now achieved that goal. I think it's time for a new challenge in cycling. Choosing Team Visma | Lease a Bike Women was an easy decision. The way the team works and its professional approach really appeal to me," the ambitious Ferrand-Prévot says via a press release.
"Women's cycling has come a long way since I left the sport," she adds. "I can't wait to get back into the peloton. With the support of the team, I am sure I can do great things again, so I am very motivated. I want to win The Tour de France Femmes."
Team manager Rutger Tijssen is happy with Ferrand-Prévot's arrival. "Pauline is an exceptionally talented athlete who decided to devote herself entirely to mountain biking a few years ago. With her Olympic gold medal, she has now completed mountain biking. I admire that she has taken the bold decision to return to the road with a clear objective: to win the Tour de France Femmes."
"It will be a challenging project, but we as a team believe she can do it," Tijssen continues. "We will support her in achieving her goal. Although the transition to road racing will take some time. Mountain biking is an explosive one-and-a-half-hour sport. A road race is more about endurance over a longer period. We will give her time to become a road cyclist again. She will be our team leader in the grand tours, but she will also be able to compete in the Walloon classics."
Place comments
0 Comments
You are currently seeing only the comments you are notified about, if you want to see all comments from this post, click the button below.
Show all comments