2025 World Cycling Championships: Tour winner Pauline Ferrand-Prévot starts as top favourite in Rwanda

Just a few days ago she announced her withdrawal, but now she's in: Pauline Ferrand-Prévot will lead an extremely strong French squad in the road race at the 2025 World Cycling Championships in Rwanda on 27 September 2025. This was announced by the French website lequipe.fr. After the Victory at the Tour de France in July the 33-year-old Frenchwoman is the top favourite on the mountainous course for the first World Championship race on African soil. Especially as few national teams have such a strong line-up as the seven-strong Equipe Tricolore: the 2024 Olympic mountain bike champion will be escorted by professional cyclists of distinction: Tour stage winners Maeva Squiban and Cédrine Kerbaol, 2024 Tour fourth-placed Évita Muzic and former Giro runner-up Juliette Labous. They all have medal chances on the climber's course. Ferrand-Prévot is not scheduled to start in the individual time trial; Labous and Kerbaol are expected to compete. "PFP" is also not scheduled for the mixed relay - the road race will be the Tour winner's only World Championship start in Rwanda.

Defending champion Kopecky without a chance?

>> World Cycling Championships 2025: These are the routes in Kigali

Last year, Lotte Kopecky won the World Championship title in Zurich on a course with significantly fewer metres of elevation gain. The Belgian, who has not been in top form recently, is likely to be put out by the many metres of altitude on the course around the Rwandan capital of Kigali. Over a distance of 164.6 kilometres, a total of 3350 metres in altitude have to be mastered on the circuit. The French women's strongest rivals are likely to be the Dutch riders, including 2023 Tour winner and this year's Tour runner-up Demi Vollering and former world champion Anna van der Breggen, as well as the Italian team. Their top rider Elisa Longo Borghini won the other very difficult stage race on the women's calendar, the Giro d'Italia, in July. The strong 33-year-old Italian climber told the internet portal cyclingnews.com: "The course in Rwanda suits my abilities well. I want to start there in good form. I would like to become world champion one day."

Her French rival Ferrand-Prévot was already road world champion in 2014 before focussing entirely on mountain biking, where she collected world championship titles and most recently celebrated her Olympic victory. After her Comeback on the road at the beginning of the year and significantly less body weight than before, the Frenchwoman surprised everyone by winning the toughest road race in July. The cyclist from Reims, who lives near the Cote d'Azur, had originally decided against competing in the World Championships because she needed to rest after her triumph in the Tour. She also initially favoured a start at the European Championships in France at the beginning of October. French national coach Paul Brousse explained the top rider's rethink: "After the Tour, the priority was to recover, to withdraw from the excitement, which also caused a bit of mental fatigue." Now she has recovered and is aiming high. "She now feels able to fully commit to the two goals at the end of the season, the World Championships and the European Championships," added the selection coach.

Difficult conditions in Rwanda

It is not only the course, which is one of the most difficult in recent decades, that makes these World Championships particularly difficult. The altitude (Kigali is around 1,600 metres above sea level) and the tropical climate make endurance competitions at the venue challenging. In addition, it was controversial whether the first Road World Championships on African soil should take place at all - after all, the Rwandan government supports the rebels who are fighting a civil war in neighbouring Congo near the border. However, despite criticism, the cycling world governing body UCI stuck with the event.