Cycling: Frenchwoman Pauline Ferrand-Prévot wins the Tour de France

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot won the Tour de France after nine days of racing on Sunday in Châtel, Haute-Savoie, where she soloed to win the 9th and final stage.

The 33-year-old Frenchwoman, Olympic mountain bike champion just over a year ago at the Paris 2024 Games, succeeds Poland's Katarzyna Niewiadoma. In the final overall standings, she finished ahead of the Dutchwoman Demi Vollering, the 2023 winner, who was 3:42 behind. Niewiadoma completed the podium, more than four minutes behind.

A year after her Olympic victory on the hill of Élancourt, the Reims native adds a new prestigious line to an exceptional list of achievements, including fifteen world titles in several cycling specialties (mountain biking, gravel, cyclo-cross, road).

"It was so difficult (this stage). I wanted to win here with the yellow jersey. It's a dream," she said after crossing the finish line, giving herself a second stage victory after her success the day before at the top of the Col de la Madeleine, where she took the yellow jersey. Thirty-six years after Jeannie Longo , 40 after Bernard Hinault, "PFP" has put France back on the honor roll of the Grande Boucle.

After seven years devoted mainly to mountain biking, crowned by her Olympic victory, she focused this season on the road, winning Paris-Roubaix at the end of winter and also securing places of honor in the Tour of Flanders (2nd) and the Strade Bianche (3rd). She then focused on preparing for the Tour, abandoning at the beginning of May in the middle of the Vuelta because she considered herself lacking in form.

Three days before the start of the Tour de France in Vannes (Morbihan), she explained that she was giving herself three years to win the race. "I remember telling my mother that I wanted to be a boy to do the Tour de France, now it's possible with women. And that's why I came back on the road, to do the Tour," she said at the time. Nine stages and 1,165 km later, her first attempt was the right one.