Pauline Ferrand-Prévot sealed a spectacular overall victory in the Tour de France Femmes with style, claiming her second mountain-stage win in Châtel Les Portes du Soleil. The reigning Olympic mountain biking champion, who also won Saturday’s stage on the Col de la Madeleine, celebrated another solo triumph in the final stage amid jubilant scenes.
Ferrand-Prévot becomes the first French rider to win the Tour de France Femmes, 36 years after Jeannie Longo’s victory in the Tour de France Féminin – though that earlier race didn’t match the current event’s scale, difficulty, or global prestige. After a 40-year wait for a French successor to Bernard Hinault in the men’s Tour, the nation has now embraced women’s cycling, with President Emmanuel Macron calling the 33-year-old from Reims minutes after her victory was confirmed.
Her remarkable achievement – winning both the Tour de France Femmes and Paris-Roubaix in the same year, just twelve months after claiming Olympic mountain biking gold – showcases her extraordinary versatility and ambition. Having switched from mountain biking to road racing with the goal of winning the Tour within three years, she accomplished it in just one.
“I set the bar extremely high this year in my preparation,” she said. “There were many sacrifices. Now I just want to savor this moment – it might never happen again.”
Her dominance was evident from the opening stage when she broke away on the final climb in Plumelec with a blistering acceleration. Though she remained patient throughout the race, even during a mid-Tour spat between team managers, she struck decisively when it mattered most. While staying under the radar for seven stages, her wins on the Madeleine and in Châtel left no doubt about her superiority.
“This morning I told my directors if I had a chance to win in yellow, I’d go for it,” she explained. “It all depended on how I felt on the final climb. When I attacked, I didn’t think I could sustain it to the finish.”
The final stage began nervously as Ferrand-Prévot initially lost contact with the peloton on the descent to Sallanches. “I made a mistake on that first descent,” she admitted. “The pressure of wearing yellow made me cautious, so afterward I stayed near the front.”
She rejoined the main group before the first climb, where the favorites soon separated from the pack in pursuit of breakaway rider Anna van der Breggen. By the time they reached the brutal Col de Joux-Plane, the lead group had whittled down to just seven riders, including Ferrand-Prévot, Sarah Gigante, Demi Vollering, and defending champion Kasia Niewiadoma.
When Gigante attacked 5km from the summit, she couldn’t break away as she had on the Madeleine. Instead, it was Vollering who… [text cuts off]On the fast descent, Vollering and Niewiadoma worked together to drop Gigante, successfully pushing her out of the Tour’s top three. By the bottom of the descent, they had created a gap she couldn’t close.
Vollering, who finished second overall, and Niewiadoma, in third, have been impressively consistent—they’ve stood on the podium in every edition of the Tour de France Femmes since it began in 2022.
But this past week belonged to the resurgence of French cycling. Wearing the yellow jersey and claiming four stage wins—two by Ferrand-Prévot and two by the unstoppable Maëva Squiban—the home team dominated the race. At long last, French cycling has found new life after the era of Hinault.
