While she is enjoying her last days of vacation, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot returned to the controversy following her coronation in the Tour de France.
After Rotterdam and Spain, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot has been in New York for a few days. A stay in the Big Apple which will mark the end of your vacation. The Visma rider will indeed be back in France next week and will be able to start looking towards next season.
And in the meantime, interviewed by Marca, the Olympic mountain bike champion looked back on her year 2025, that of her big return to the road, marked by a victory in Paris-Roubaix and especially her triumph in the Tour de France, the first for a French rider since Jeannie Longo. A victory which was not easy to digest, explaining having felt a “feeling of emptiness”.
“I had planned three years to try to win the Tour, and I did it in one year, she explained. So the next day I woke up and said to myself, ‘Now what?’ I felt a little empty, perhaps because of the accumulated emotion and also exhaustion. But now that feeling is gone and all I can think about is winning it again.”
PFP cries injustice
And this coronation on the Tour was all the more complicated to digest as it was accompanied by a lively controversy over her weight, with some believing that she had put her health in danger by trying to lose as much weight as possible. “It’s true that it was an important subject after the Tour. I found it a bit unfair because there was a lot of talk about my weight when I simply prepared as best I could for the race,” she confided.
“In endurance sports, it is important to be light, especially with climbs like the Madeleine: you have to be in top shape. But the importance of this discussion has been exaggerated, she continued. In women’s cycling these issues are discussed more, partly for health reasons and also because, as women, we need to take care of our bodies. It’s an important debate, but I found it unfair that it came up again just after my victory. Weight matters, of course, but it’s only one factor among others: you also have to train, recover and do everything correctly. It’s just one parameter, not the only thing that matters. »
