I have a love/hate relationship as a fan, with Pauline Ferrand Prevot. I love how she is all business. Train on her own, pick just the races she wants to win, and usually shows up and does just that. She’s never cared about the overall World Cup for some reason. I find this odd actually. She clearly likes to collect titles and championships. So why not grab at least one overall World Cup title to go along with the others? The key for the overall is clearly being consistent all year. And by all year, we’re talking about 6-9 races total. I can’t imagine her having much problem with that at all. She might not win every race, but she’d be on the podium most every race – and, she can hold her own at the XCC races, helping her even more.
But it is what it is. She’s now leaving mountain biking completely so she says. She’ll focus on road racing. Her boyfriend races for Visma–Lease a Bike. So she would now be teammates? That’s kind of cool I suppose. She’s no stranger to road racing, she has won a ton of road races over her long career. And, with the newish Tour de France for women in full swing, and in fact, announcing that they will have 9 stages now for that race, I suppose it make sense to give it a go now. She’s not old, but in her early 30’s, maybe she sees the writing on the wall. The young generation is moving quickly to take over the XC race scene.
For some reason, women professional road racers seem to have very long careers is wanted. Many are in their top form well into their late 30s, even 40s. So if she’s done with MTB, she could go another 5-8 years on the road as a professional. I’ll tell you one thing, I would watch the Tour de France Femmes just to see how she does.
So good luck to PFP, I’ll miss her at the mtb races. I have a video I made in 2019 at Snowshoe, I walked behind her for about 5 minutes after the race as she walked up to see Bart and Warner or something. She’s very compact, and seemed quite nice as she greeted fans along the walk. I was too chicken to say a word to her, so it was just fun to walk behind like a true dork.
But there’s one race left for her to worry about, July 28th. Can she walk away from MTB with the one title that’s eluded her so far?
