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At her fourth and remaining Olympic Games, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (France) lastly claimed the cross-country mountain bike gold medal at Paris 2024 which has lengthy eluded her with a sensational solo win on residence French soil at Élancourt Hill.
The highly-decorated multi-discipline celebrity attacked away with brutal tempo on the second lap up the principle climb of the 4.4km course southwest of Paris, leaving Puck Pieterse (Netherlands) and Loana Lecomte (France) in her mud and dominating the entire day proper to the road.
It was an emotional completion of a profession objective for Ferrand-Prévot, who crossed the road in tears, welcomed residence by a singing French crowd who noticed their hero obtain her dream and take France’s second gold medal of Paris 2024.
Pieterse appeared set to take the silver medal as Lecomte light behind and finally crashed out of the race, nevertheless, a puncture did for the younger Dutch star’s probabilities on lap 5 and compelled her right into a rear-wheel change the place a chasing group caught her.
In her ever-composed fashion, Ferrand-Prévot oozed class as she put in constant laps across the 12-minute mark to increase her lead all through the seven-lap race, ending with an enormous profitable margin of two:57 over Hayley Batten (USA) who took an amazing silver medal after an exciting battle with Jenny Rissveds (Sweden).
Despite being a 12-time World Champion throughout street, mountain bike, cyclocross and gravel racing, an Olympic medal of any color has managed to go amiss all through Ferrand-Prévot’s illustrious profession.
On Sunday and in certainly one of her remaining mountain bike races earlier than turning her focus again to street racing, the 32-year-old has put that proper and in one of the simplest ways doable in entrance of adoring residence French crowds and to cheers of ‘Pauline! Pauline’ all through the 1:26:02-long effort within the French sunshine.
More to return…
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