With a dominant, historic ride on her mountain bike in Andorra, France’s 23-year-old Pauline Ferrand-Prévot now owns three current UCI World Championships with the 2015 Cyclocross World Championship and MTB XC Olympic (XCO) World titles and the 2014 Road title.
2015 World Championships, Tabor. © Matthew Lasala / Cyclocross Magazine
At least until the 2015 World Championships in Richmond, Virginia, every race Prévot enters, on any of her bikes, she’ll be dressed in the rainbow stripes of the UCI World Champion jersey. Prevot won by 58 seconds over 2009 World Champion Irina Kalentieva from Russia.
“I tried to give everything” Ferran-Prévot kept saying after the finish. “I will try to keep my road title, and will try to be very good for the Olympics,” she explained, leaving cyclocross fans wondering how much of a cyclocross season she’ll ride.
“I was fed up people would not stop talking about the treble,” she told L’Equipe. “It is not that I don’t care about what others think, but I do things for myself.”
Sadly, she won’t be lining up for the World Cup in Vegas this September, but she will likely try for the rare Olympic road and mountain bike race double.
Don’t miss our interview with cyclocross, road and mountain bike star Pauline Ferrand-Prevot from 2011, before her meteoric rise to stardom and UCI World Championship titles. Some notable quotes from that interview:
- “But ultimately it was my mother who introduced me to cycling.”
- “It isn’t difficult for me to switch from one bike to the other.”
- ” I have always been precocious.”
