Pauline Ferrand-Prévot will make her first competitive appearance on the road in over three years when she lines up for France at the World Championships road race in Zurich on September 28.
After winning mountain bike gold at the Paris Olympic Games, Ferrand-Prévot confirmed that she would return to the road full-time in 2025, when she will race for Visma-Lease a Bike and target overall victory at the Tour de France Femmes.
Ferrand-Prévot was already world champion on the road in Ponferrada in 2014, but she would increasingly shift the focus of her multi-discipline career towards off-road events after joining Canyon-SRAM in 2017. Her last appearance in the road Worlds came in Bergen in 2017, when she placed 11th.
The French rider spent the 2021 and 2022 seasons with the Team Absolute Absalon BMC mountain bike squad before becoming an Ineos Grenadiers rider in 2023 as she built towards the Paris Olympics.
Ferrand-Prévot signed off on her mountain bike career with silver in the cross-country short track event at the recent World Championships in Vallnord. The 32-year-old has been cross-country world champion on five occasions, and she has also collected rainbow jerseys in marathon and short track MTB, gravel and cyclocross.
Since the end of the 2018 season, Ferrand-Prévot’s only competitive outings on the road have come at the French championships in 2019 and 2021, but she was included in the seven-rider selection for the Zurich Worlds that was announced by the French Cycling Federation on Monday.
Ferrand-Prévot will be joined in the team by Juliette Labous (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL), Cédrine Kerbaol (Ceratizit-WNT), Marion Bunel (St Michel-Mavic) and the FDJ-SUEZ trio of Évita Muzic, Léa Curinier and Jade Wiel.
Kerbaol and Juliette will also compete in the individual time trial on September 22, and they will be joined by Audrey Cordon-Ragot (Human Powered Health) in the mixed relay team.
The men’s team, as well as the male representatives in the mixed relay, will be announced by coach Thomas Voeckler on Friday, with two-time world champion Julian Alaphilippe expected to lead the line.
