“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”>
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot reached into her multi-disciplinary quiver and deployed her mountain biking chops to dominate and destroy the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in spectacular fashion.
The peloton is still spinning from the Frenchwoman’s complete victory, but it was her all-around bike-handling skills, off-road mentality, and all-in winner’s attitude honed in more than a decade of racing off-road that helped her blaze to the pinnacle of women’s road racing.
Ferrand-Prévot’s Tour victory was no fluke, and it’s the culmination of years spent mastering disciplines far rougher and sometimes more chaotic than road racing.
Her background in mountain biking — where red-line efforts and top bike-handling skills are essential to victory — shaped her into modern cycling’s most complete rider.
“The Olympic Games were the goal of my career. Winning the Tour de France was more of a childhood dream than a challenge I set for myself,” she said. “So these are two victories that are totally different and incomparable, but both are exceptional.”
While she might see them as separate, stand-alone achievements, it was her underlying mastery of racing and her world-class bike-handling skills that ultimately would deliver her gold and yellow on cycling’s biggest stages 12 months apart.
Ferrand-Prévot leaned on her superb pedigree honed in mountain biking to win road racing’s most important stage race. Here’s how:
A return to road: ‘Win yellow within 3 years’
Ferrand-Prévot signaled her intentions just moments after mining gold in Paris in the 2024 Olympic Games last summer.
After finally winning the elusive cross-country Olympic title in front of home crowds, she immediately let her intentions be known: “I want to win the Tour de France Femmes within three years.”
No one could have imagined it would come so soon.
Some doubted her ability to have the depth and endurance to transition from mountain biking, which are typically about one and a half-hour efforts, to the four- to five-hour efforts stacked up across a stage race.
Yet it was one hour on the rivet up the Col de la Madeleine that would prove decisive in this Tour.
“I’ve learned from mountain biking how to ride at my limit for an hour,” she said after her annihilation on the Madeleine on Saturday that catapulted her into yellow.
“I knew I had to manage this effort for over 1 hour 20 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes. It was a bit like a mountain bike effort, where you have to put yourself in the red zone and not go over it. I know how to manage this kind of effort pretty well.”
#TDFF2025 | Avec ce Tour de France, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot étoffe encore plus son IMMENSE palmarès acquis dans toutes les disciplines du cyclisme.
La plus grande sportive française de tous les temps ? pic.twitter.com/nxa213jpYP
— francetvsport (@francetvsport) August 3, 2025
Last year, she pivoted her training, but her career of mixing on and off-road was a blessing and the turning point in this Tour. She piled on the kilometers, often training with her partner Dylan Van Baarle, a pro at Visma-Lease a Bike.
Early hits out, including the UAE Tour in February, saw Ferrand-Prévot lacking the firepower on the steepest climbs, but she leaned into her excellent bike-handling skills across the spring.
She confirmed she could go the WorldTour distance with a spectacular victory at Paris-Roubaix Femmes in April.
The die was cast. She could win at the WorldTour level, and now it was all-in for yellow.
MTB mindset: ‘Course inspection is important’
Mountain bike races are contested on closed circuits, so course inspection and training rides are an essential piece of the off-road puzzle.
So when the Tour de France Femmes route was announced, Ferrand-Prévot took a close look. Of course, she couldn’t inspect every inch of pavement across nine stages, but she could see the obvious: the Col de Madeleine summit finale in stage 8 was where the race could be won.
She used her off-road blueprint to inspect the climb with an MTB mindset.
“In mountain biking, we inspect the course very closely. We know every jump, every root, every corner,” she said last week. “I knew the Madeleine would be a very important part of the race. I made sure to inspect this climb in training.”
She often would bring her parents in tow, who would pass up water bottles and motorpace her as she put the fine-tuning on the Tour de France Femmes preparation.
And she honed her form and condition to make the ultimate pivot to the road, and shaved four kilos from her body weight after Paris-Roubaix.
“Everyone prepares the way they want. For Roubaix, I was much heavier because I knew I needed to be heavier to have power on the flats,” she said. “We know this is an endurance sport, and to climb you need to have a [high] watts per kilogram. I made the choice, I worked hard for it.”
The idea was to have as few surprises as possible and have a tactical blueprint of when and where to attack.
The queen stage to the Col de la Madeleine was the tipping point. With direct rivals Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney seemingly stuck, she threw everything into the moment.
According to Latern Rouge, she averaged 5.04 w/kg for 64:50, one of the highest numbers in women’s cycling.
Skilz to burn: ‘This was no improvisation’
Mountain biking is often about staying concentrated and on the limit for 60 to 90 minutes without unraveling. That edge is what Ferrand-Prévot brought to this Tour.
Though she abandoned the Vuelta a España Femenina in May, she doubled down on the Tour de France Femmes.
When the race started in Vannes, she kicked to third in an early signal that she was on form.
For the rest of the race, she would use her career forged on bike-handling skills from racing on road, gravel, single-track, and mud fields of Belgium to her advantage.
There was no question that she is one of the most skilled racers in the bunch. She is the only rider, male or female, to win world titles in road, CX, and MTB all in the same season.
“Winning the Tour de France is not improvisation. It’s just sacrifices that I’m not sure I’ll be able to repeat,” she said Sunday. “I first want to think about my parents. I drag them into my madness, into my struggles. They followed me on reconnaissance missions, in Brittany, in the Alps; they give me water bottles during the races. Without them, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Imaginez l’impact de la performance de Pauline Ferrand Prévot pour reléguer Léon Marchand en bandeau sur la UNE de l’Equipe #TDFF2025 pic.twitter.com/Hk9v9yHdN5
— Etienne Goursaud (@EtienneGoursaud) August 3, 2025
Her bike-handling acumen would shine across the Tour, and she negotiated a tense opening act of the race that saw some big names crash out or fall ill.
Perhaps the exits of Marlen Reusser (Movistar) and Elisa Longo-Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) made the GC less complicated, but her skills kept her out of trouble and in the race.
With some riders struggling with position or even descending, by the time the race hit the Alps, Ferrand-Prévot blended her immense experience and skillset to deliver a stunning victory.
Cycling’s most versatile champion
The yellow jersey is the cherry on her cycling career’s cake.
Everyone knows the stats: 14 MTB world titles in such disciplines as cross-country, marathon, short track and team relay. World titles in CX, road, and gravel.
The Olympics were her bête noire. She raced in four Olympics, and nearly quit after Rio de Janeiro in 2016, but fought on to win her only Olympic medal with gold in Paris last summer.
Le palmarès de Pauline Ferrand-Prévot ! La plus grande sportive Française de l’histoire !
➡️ Tour de France
➡️ Jeux Olympiques de VTT
➡️ Mondiaux de VTT
➡️ Europe de VTT… pic.twitter.com/JFCrzxTWp7
— Univers Sport (@UniversSport_) August 3, 2025
Ferrand-Prévot has been winning world titles since she was a teenager, and has been the master of single-track, muddy tracks, gravel double-tracks, and now the paved climbs of the Alps.
She’s France’s first winner of the Tour de France Femmes, and follows in the pedal strokes of Bernard Hinault in the 1984 Tour de France, and Catherine Marsal in the 1990 Tour de France Féminin, the last French winners of the national tours.
On Sunday, she seemed a bit overwhelmed by what she accomplished, but her on-road success was forged in the long years racing off-road.
