After a very average start to the season at the Emirates, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot won her first very good result since her return on the road, taking third place from Strade Bianche.
This is why she came back, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot. After winning everything in mountain biking, offering a triumph last summer at the Paris Olympic Games, the Frenchman had decided to return on the road, this season, with La Visma – Lease a Bike.
Its avowed objective is to win the Tour de France, and the start of the year of the Champenoise had not sent very reassuring signals, with a 17th place on the UAE Tour. It was not necessarily worrying (it was a recovery race), but let’s say that it still asked a few small questions.
On the Strade Bianche, this Saturday, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot showed a much more convincing face. She first slipped into a beautiful breakaway, leaving 40 kilometers from the finish, a blow that could have been the right without the big work of the FDJ-Suez for Demi Vollering. And when the Dutchman has placed an acceleration, at the top of Tolfe, the last stamped sector, “PFP” was close to hanging her wheel, as only Anna Van der Breggen was able to do it.
Ferrand-Prévot, “the mark of a huge champion”
Behind the two favorites, who explained themselves in the final in Siena, with the victory for Vollering, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot ended up in a group of prosecutors. And it was she who made the difference in the terrible via Santa Catarina to get a good third place, just in front of the French champion Juliette Labous (FDJ-Suez). Promising!
“PFP must continue to take its marks on the road but what she has shown today suggests enormous performances!” Returning 10 years later when the level has increased enormously and already being at the level of the best is really the brand of a huge champion ”commented Lilian Calmejane on X (ex-Twitter).
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot will continue her classics campaign with Milan-San Remo in two weeks, before the Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège at the end of April. It will be in early May on the roads of the Vuelta, before the end of July to tackle the Tour de France. Nice program.
