Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (France) has one of the spectacular palmarès in biking, with 12 World Championship titles throughout disciplines – from highway to mountain bike, cyclocross and gravel – however her closing likelihood so as to add an Olympic Games medal to the tally is about to unfold at Élancourt Hill, close to Paris.
The indicators of kind have been sturdy within the two UCI Whoop Mountain Bike World Cup races Ferrand-Prévot has taken half on this 12 months, with the French rider coming first within the cross-country Olympic races at Val di Sole and Nove Město nevertheless she sat out the remaining. The 32-year-old, who is predicted to show her consideration again to the highway in 2025, has been focussed on coaching for the large objective forward, lining up on Sunday as one of many favourites for the cross-country mountain bike race at her residence Olympics.
“The objective was to be calm, to maintain all my vitality to coach and get better,” Ferrand-Prévot mentioned in an interview with L’Equipe. “There wasn’t a lot room exterior for what I love to do.
“These might be my final Games, I did not wish to remorse something. I reduce myself off from every thing and it was helpful.”
Ferrand-Prévot took her fifth mountain bike cross-country (XCO) world title in 2023, having taken her first in 2015, and whereas gold could be a fairytale finale to her closing 12 months of racing the mountain bike, she is not getting carried away by the stress related to ‘the occasion of my life’.
“Even if on paper, it’s enormous, it stays solely sport and in a couple of years, nobody will care whether or not I received or not,” Ferrand-Prévot instructed L’Equipe. “Whatever occurs, the story might be lovely. I should not have this stress to completely win, it’s extra to say to myself ‘You did every thing to get to the place you might be right now’.”
Ferrand-Prévot has raced her mountain bike within the Olympics at London, Rio and Tokyo, with tenth in Japan being her finest outcome off-road and eighth place on the highway in London being her prime inserting altogether. However, she has accomplished every thing potential to enhance on that at her fourth Olympic Games in Paris.
“I’m fairly assured about my bodily situation,” Ferrand-Prévot instructed the French newspaper. “Anything can occur and above all, it is nonetheless sport. Sport is gorgeous as a result of it may be merciless, however we’ll keep away from that being the case on Sunday.”
The race is about to play out on a gap lap of two.2km, earlier than taking over a number of passes of a 4.4km course, that features a technical rock backyard and a difficult climb. The girls’s race begins at 14:00 CEDT, with the lads’s cross nation a day in a while Monday July 29.
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