Pauline Ferrand-Prévot has confirmed that the upcoming World Championships would be the closing mountain bike race of her storied profession, admitting it feels ‘unusual’ to be retiring the knobbly tyres however that she’s ‘at peace’ with the choice.
The Frenchwoman has loved a massively profitable profession on the mountain bike, successful 5 world titles and just lately including Olympic gold, however she is focusing solely on highway racing from 2025, leaving the Ineos Grenadiers set-up to affix the devoted Visma-Lease a Bike ladies’s group.
In an emotional social media put up, Ferrand-Prévot confirmed she won’t compete within the remaining races within the World Cup sequence past the World Championships subsequent weekend, which she described as her “final dance”.
“In lower than per week I’ll take part at my final MTB World championship, but additionally at my final MTB race. Tbh [to be honest], sounds a bit unusual to put in writing that, however I’m feeling comfortable and in peace with my determination, as I’ve a brand new purpose and a brand new problem on the highway,” Ferrand-Prévot wrote.
“Over the previous years I bought to met unimaginable individuals, seen wonderful locations. For certain, this sport will keep the number one in my coronary heart.”
The 2024 MTB Worlds will convey some circularity to all of it, going down in Pal Arinsal in Andorra, the nation the place she claimed her first Elite XCO world title again in 2015. It got here on the again of world titles on the highway and in cyclo-cross, in a unprecedented run of rainbow success that has since been enhanced by her taking the first-ever Gravel World Championship in 2022.
With 5 XCO world titles – plus a pair extra in Short-Track and Marathon – and now the Olympic XCO title to her identify, Ferrand-Prévot feels she has achieved the whole lot she will on the mountain bike and is now able to convey the curtain down, with likelihood of doing so with one other rainbow jersey.
“In 2015, I bought the gold medal right here in Andorra for my first Mtb Elite World title. I might be extraordinarily proud to closed this chapter of my life the identical approach. So, let’s have final dance,” she wrote.
“Merci to your entire MTB neighborhood for what you convey to this sport. See you all subsequent week.”
Ferrand-Prévot, who received the highway race world title on the age of twenty-two, has not ridden a correct string of highway races since 2018, when she was with Canyon-SRAM, whereas her most important interval of success was throughout her breakthrough in 2014 and 2015 with the group she’s set to rejoin in 2025, then generally known as Rabobank. She has said her want to focus on the yellow jersey on the Tour de France Femmes.
