While Pauline Ferrand-Prévot maintains that "winning the Tour de France Femmes" in the next three seasons is her main goal in returning to road cycling, she won't be rushing into that, with a 2025 schedule based around learning and settling back into the discipline.
Ferrand-Prévot is rejoining the world of road racing with Visma-Lease a Bike after ending her mountain biking career with an Olympic gold medal at her home Games in Paris. From the moment she considered a return to the tarmac, the Tour de France has always been on the French rider's mind.
"Eventually, I decided to step away from mountain biking and return to road racing because I simply wasn’t done with cycling," said Ferrand-Prévot on the team's website.
"My ultimate goal is to compete for victory in the Tour de France Femmes over the next three years. But I’ll need some time to settle in, so for now, realism is my guiding principle. I mainly want to be 100% prepared for the Tour. That way, I won’t have any regrets afterwards.
"This year’s edition will mostly be a learning process. In the years ahead, I may return with higher ambitions, but for now, I think I still need time to build toward my absolute top level."
A world champion on the road back in 2014, Ferrand-Prévot has already reached the pinnacle of the discipline, however, that was over a decade ago when the Tour de France Femmes didn't even exist. The sport has moved on significantly in that time, both in terms of professionalism and the performance level of the whole peloton, and Ferrand-Prévot knows she'll need time to keep up and adapt her MTB form.
She rode her first road race since 2021 at the World Championships in Zurich, eventually ending in a DNF, while her most recent full road season came in 2018 when she was on Canyon-SRAM.
"In 2025, I mainly want to learn and identify areas for improvement. The most important thing is to give it our all and be able to say we left nothing on the table," said Ferrand-Prévot, aware that it won't all be plain sailing once the racing kicks off.
"Losing is part of the process, and that’s how you learn. I’m even looking forward to losing and learning from it together with the team."
Visma's management also isn't putting too much pressure on the 12-time World Champion across multiple disciplines as she leads them at the Tour de France Femmes in July, trusting that at 32 she can rediscover her best legs on the road.
"We want to see how far we can get in the general classification. But we’re not setting a specific result as a goal," said women's Team Manager Rutger Tijssen.
"Pauline is just now returning to road racing, and it’s important to stay realistic. Her ultimate objective is to compete for the Tour victory within three years, but for the coming season, our focus is on learning and growing as a team.
"That means we might target a podium finish in the summer, or we might end up going for a top-10 result."
Ferrand-Prévot also laid out two early-season goals of Strade Bianche and the inaugural women's Milan-San Remo. In the early Classics, she'll also reunite with former Rabobank teammate Marianne Vos, before they pair up at the Tour.
She described their time together on the Dutch team between 2012 and 2016 as "the best five years of my career", with her world title and wins at La Flèche Wallonne and a stage of the Giro d'Italia also arriving in that period.
"I raced with Marianne back then, someone I deeply respect," continued Ferrand-Prévot. "She’s not only an amazing rider but also a wonderful person."
With Vos and Ferrand-Prévot to build up their young team around, Visma are confident of a step up in the coming years, not just at the Tour de France but all season.
"It’s all part of a process. We want to improve step by step and give Pauline the time she needs to fully adapt to road racing," said Tijssen.
"With Marianne as an experienced leader and a talented team around them, we have a solid foundation to build something special—not just for 2025, but for the years to come."
