After two seasons as Ineos Grenadiers’ only female rider, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot is set to join Visma-Lease a Bike in 2025 according to a report from WielerFlits.
The 12-time multi-discipline World Champion had already announced that 2024 would be her final year of mountain biking and that she was eyeing a return to the road with the big goal of riding the Tour de France Femmes.
“I do miss it, especially now that we have a Tour de France for women,” Ferrand-Prévot told Ineos Grenadiers teammate Geraint Thomas on his podcast back in October.
“I would like to ride the Tour de France one day. Right now I'm very focused on the Paris Olympics, but why not get back to road racing next year, or the year after? I would like that.”
Her main focus in 2024, and for her time at Ineos, has been the Paris Olympics after it has been one of the only accolades to elude her during her illustrious career. She’ll take part in the cross-country MTB event on July 28.
The departure of Ferrand-Prévot would likely signal the continuation of Ineos Grenadiers being one of the few men's WorldTour teams not to have a women's equivalent.
Ferrand-Prévot’s transfer to Visma-Lease a Bike for 2025 would see her return to full road competition for the first time since 2018, with her final few seasons on Canyon-SRAM only seeing her ride sporadically at French national championships.
She’s been the road World Champion in the past during her most successful 2014 season, where she also won La Flèche Wallonne, Emakumeen Euskal Bira and became French national road and ITT champion.
However, for the past six seasons, her eyes have only been focused on off-road competition, during which time she has taken in eight more MTB rainbow jerseys, one more in the cyclocross field and became the inaugural women’s gravel World Champion.
A move to Visma-Lease a Bike would see her reunited with former teammate and fellow multi-discipline star, Marianne Vos, after the pair were both on Rabobank-Liv between 2012-2016.
Ferrand-Prévot would likely join Vos and young star Fem van Empel in combining both cyclocross with road for the Dutch outfit. Vos and Van Empel are two of only four riders already signed on to Visma for 2025.
