"I didn't do anything extreme": Pauline Ferrand-Prévot justifies her weight loss to win the Tour de France

On Sunday evening, all of France was celebrating. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot had just ended nearly four decades of famine , winning the final two stages of the Tour de France in the Alps, and the overall standings with them. But behind her clear and uncontested victory, a small wind of criticism was brewing. The cause: the Olympic mountain bike champion's spectacular weight loss to be able to compete in the Tour de France – she claimed to have lost four kilos in two months, and the difference was visible to the naked eye.

Without ever naming her directly, several riders had mentioned the bad example sent to the girls who watched the Tour. Starting with Cédrine Kerbaol, 8th in the general classification and who trained as a dietician. "What happens is that when we have people who succeed [while being very thin], they will be looked at by others and they unconsciously become role models ," she explained to Libé . "Inevitably, we end up with people who think that it's the absolute truth and that this is how you have to do it to perform." If the race to be thin allows you to gain a few precious seconds in the mountains (we're talking about twenty to thirty seconds per kilogram on a long climb), it can also endanger the athletes' health. Many riders, who are too thin, for example, do not have their periods, which can cause fertility problems later on and weaken bones, Kerbaol continues.

At a press conference after her victory, and then in an Instagram story shared on Monday, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot acknowledged having received "a lot of messages" on social media about her weight from people who said she was "not a good example for young people." The Visma-Lease a bike team rider defended herself: "Everyone prepares as they wish. For Roubaix, I was much heavier, because I knew I had to be heavier to have power on the flat. […] For this race, I knew I had to climb for an hour and a half on the Col de la Madeleine and I tried to make the most of it. You have to adapt to the terrain that is presented to you. "

The Frenchwoman then assured that she had "done nothing extreme" and that she had been supervised by a nutritionist from her team throughout her diet to ensure she "still had energy after nine days of racing." "It's a delicate subject. […] I know it's not 100 % healthy and I'm not going to stay at my current weight indefinitely. It's just for the Tour de France. It's also my job to be the best I can be. We know it's an endurance sport, and to climb, you need to have a certain number of watts [power] per kilogram. I made this choice, I worked hard to get there," Pauline Ferrand-Prévot explained, calling on the parents of the children who watched the race to explain to them that she was doing this for the Tour de France but that she is not always like that.

Also questioned about her weight in a press conference at the end of the Tour, her main rival, the Dutchwoman Demi Vollering (second in the general classification), indirectly criticized the yellow jersey: "I could lose weight too, but I don't want to be extremely thin. […] I'm proud of my weight and I want to be a good example. I hope to be able to win again at this weight in the future to show the girls that you don't need to be super thin to do it."