Pauline Ferrand-Prévot is ‘positively prepared’ to tackle her first highway race in over three years on the Zürich World Championships on Saturday, in keeping with Ineos Grenadiers coach Kurt Bogaerts.
Bogaerts has labored with Ferrand-Prévot since she joined the British workforce as their solely girls’s rider on the finish of 2022 with the aim of successful Olympic mountain bike gold – the one race that had eluded her throughout an illustrious profession.
Having achieved that aim in August in dominant style at her dwelling Paris Games, Ferrand-Prévot ended her MTB profession at Worlds in Andorra final month and is now turning her focus to attempting to win the Tour de France Femmes with a brand new workforce for 2025, Visma-Lease a Bike.
Before that, nonetheless, Ferrand Prévot, 32, will make her long-awaited return to highway competitors this weekend on the 154.1km Zürich parcourse as a part of a powerful French squad, a decade on from changing into highway World Champion in Ponferrada, Spain.
“I feel she will be very profitable and with the best way she trains, she’s positively prepared to show it round to the highway,” mentioned Bogaerts to Cyclingnews earlier than Worlds.
“She has the expertise, she’s an ex-World Champion from when she was very younger. I feel she was additionally second within the Giro so I do know the capabilities she has and I feel she has a correct probability to attain on the highway.”
Bogaerts was not sure how Ferrand-Prévot would match up towards the likes of Demi Vollering (Netherlands) and Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) on the Swiss course however assured that there is not extreme strain on her to land a outcome given her time away from the self-discipline.
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“I do not know, it is tough to say nevertheless it all is determined by how the race seems. The Dutch girls all the time have a powerful workforce however I feel the French workforce can be sturdy additionally with the likes of [Juliette] Labous on the climbs so will probably be fascinating to see the place Pauline is,” mentioned the Belgian coach.
“But she would not have to go together with a specific ambition, I feel she must discover to get her again within the recreation on the highway. Then, go like that into the winter as a result of ending the season after MTB worlds would go away a little bit of hole to fill, so I feel she’s lengthened the season with one thing that could be a problem.”
The celebrity French rider will line up as one among three former highway race World Champions firstly alongside the defending rainbow jersey Kopecky and Marianne Vos (Netherlands) and the oldest French rider with the remainder of her proficient squad all being beneath 25.
Top WorldTour riders Labous, Évita Muzic, Cédrine Kerbaol, Marion Bunel, Léa Curinier and Jade Wiel make up the remainder of the French squad seeking to obtain France’s first elite girls’s highway race world title since Ferrand-Prévot in 2014.
Bogaerts additionally revealed that Ferrand-Prévot had been making small modifications in her coaching to organize for the self-discipline change, with Ineos being absolutely dedicated to their sole feminine rider proper till her final day with the workforce.
“We put a little bit of deal with making the swap. It’s small modifications that can be useful for subsequent 12 months, she’s already on highway sneakers for instance,” he laughed. “We’ve tried to complete this season in addition to we are able to as a stepping stone to subsequent 12 months. The workforce is in full assist of that and I feel we have now a file of that.
“Even people who find themselves leaving the workforce get full assist till the final day like final 12 months with Tao [Geoghegan Hart]. We gave 100% figuring out that he would go some place else and we did the identical with Pauline.”
Completing the Olympic dream
For Bogaerts, who can also be Tom Pidcock’s long-term coach, it was a profession spotlight to work with a 12-time World Champion throughout disciplines in Ferrand-Prévot, made even sweeter by the lengthy build-up to the Paris Olympics and subsequent emotional triumph.
“She’s a tremendous athlete, it was a tremendous expertise for me to work with Pauline. Amazing work ethic, tremendous skilled, tremendous good individual, quite a lot of respect, very grateful,” he mentioned.
“For me, it is one among my higher experiences with an athlete. She had already achieved loads earlier than I labored along with her, however then she had one main aim when she began working with me and that was successful the Olympics. If you then see how she completed that race, she gained nearly by a three-minute hole, which exhibits she was in the end ready.
“I used to be a small a part of that however she made quite a lot of sacrifices, put in quite a lot of arduous work once more I feel exhibits our workforce what we are able to do.”
While it is not a choice he will get to make, Bogaerts could not disguise his disappointment at Ineos’ persevering with lack of a girls’s workforce when requested about ending the working partnership with the Frenchwoman.
“Of course, it is not my choice what the workforce must do however ,in fact, you probably have a great relationship with a rider then you definately hope you’ll be able to lengthen that,” mentioned Bogaerts.
“If there was a [women’s] workforce then it most likely would have been straightforward to proceed that pathway and attempt to obtain different objectives in order that’s a disappointment for me personally nevertheless it’s less than me to say what the workforce must deal with.”
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