Pauline Ferrand-Prévot is ‘positively prepared’ to tackle her first highway race in over three years on the Zürich World Championships on Saturday, in keeping with Ineos Grenadiers coach Kurt Bogaerts.
Bogaerts has labored with Ferrand-Prévot since she joined the British crew as their solely ladies’s rider on the finish of 2022 with the purpose of profitable Olympic mountain bike gold – the one race that had eluded her throughout an illustrious profession.
Having achieved that purpose in August in dominant style at her residence Paris Video games, Ferrand-Prévot ended her MTB profession at Worlds in Andorra final month and is now turning her focus to attempting to win the Tour de France Femmes with a brand new crew for 2025, Visma-Lease a Bike.
Earlier than that, nevertheless, Ferrand Prévot, 32, will make her long-awaited return to highway competitors this weekend on the 154.1km Zürich parcourse as a part of a robust French squad, a decade on from changing into highway World Champion in Ponferrada, Spain.
“I feel she might be very profitable and with the way in which she trains, she’s positively prepared to show it round to the highway,” stated Bogaerts to Cyclingnews earlier than Worlds.
“She has the expertise, she’s an ex-World Champion from when she was very younger. I feel she was additionally second within the Giro so I do know the capabilities she has and I feel she has a correct probability to attain on the highway.”
Bogaerts was uncertain how Ferrand-Prévot would match up in opposition to the likes of Demi Vollering (Netherlands) and Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) on the Swiss course however assured that there is not extreme strain on her to land a end result given her time away from the self-discipline.
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“I do not know, it is troublesome to say but it surely all is dependent upon how the race seems. The Dutch ladies all the time have a robust crew however I feel the French crew can be sturdy additionally with the likes of [Juliette] Labous on the climbs so will probably be attention-grabbing to see the place Pauline is,” stated the Belgian coach.
“However she does not must go together with a selected ambition, I feel she must discover to get her again within the recreation on the highway. Then, go like that into the winter as a result of ending the season after MTB worlds would go away a little bit of hole to fill, so I feel she’s lengthened the season with one thing that could be a problem.”
The celebrity French rider will line up as one among three former highway race World Champions at first alongside the defending rainbow jersey Kopecky and Marianne Vos (Netherlands) and the oldest French rider with the remainder of her gifted squad all being underneath 25.
High WorldTour riders Labous, Évita Muzic, Cédrine Kerbaol, Marion Bunel, Léa Curinier and Jade Wiel make up the remainder of the French squad seeking to obtain France’s first elite ladies’s highway race world title since Ferrand-Prévot in 2014.
Bogaerts additionally revealed that Ferrand-Prévot had been making small adjustments in her coaching to arrange for the self-discipline swap, with Ineos being totally dedicated to their sole feminine rider proper till her final day with the crew.
“We put a little bit of give attention to making the swap. It is small adjustments that can be useful for subsequent 12 months, she’s already on highway footwear for instance,” he laughed. “We have tried to complete this season in addition to we will as a stepping stone to subsequent 12 months. The crew is in full help of that and I feel we’ve a file of that.
“Even people who find themselves leaving the crew get full help till the final day like final 12 months with Tao [Geoghegan Hart]. We gave 100% realizing that he would go some other place and we did the identical with Pauline.”
Finishing the Olympic dream
For Bogaerts, who can also be Tom Pidcock’s long-term coach, it was a profession spotlight to work with a 12-time World Champion throughout disciplines in Ferrand-Prévot, made even sweeter by the lengthy build-up to the Paris Olympics and subsequent emotional triumph.
“She’s an incredible athlete, it was an incredible expertise for me to work with Pauline. Wonderful work ethic, tremendous skilled, tremendous good individual, loads of respect, very grateful,” he stated.
“For me, it is one among my higher experiences with an athlete. She had already achieved loads earlier than I labored along with her, however then she had one main purpose when she began working with me and that was profitable the Olympics. In case you then see how she completed that race, she gained virtually by a three-minute hole, which reveals she was in the end ready.
“I used to be a small a part of that however she made loads of sacrifices, put in loads of arduous work once more I feel reveals our crew what we will do.”
Whereas it is not a call he will get to make, Bogaerts could not conceal his disappointment at Ineos’ persevering with lack of a ladies’s crew when requested about ending the working partnership with the Frenchwoman.
“In fact, it is not my determination what the crew must do however ,in fact, if in case you have a great relationship with a rider you then hope you possibly can lengthen that,” stated Bogaerts.
“If there was a [women’s] crew then it most likely would have been straightforward to proceed that pathway and attempt to obtain different objectives in order that’s a disappointment for me personally but it surely’s lower than me to say what the crew must give attention to.”
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