It took a long time to find a copy of L\u2019\u00c9quipe on Monday morning. France\u2019s flagship daily sports newspaper, emblazoned with an image of a yellow-clad Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot, arms outstretched and triumphant, with the banner headline Geante, had almost sold out.<\/p>\n
Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot, the first French rider to win the Tour de France Femmes<\/a>, has become a national icon almost overnight. After her Paris 2024 gold medal performance in mountain biking and the Paris\u2011Roubaix win this spring, Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot fever has taken over. Cycling\u2019s slumbering giant has finally awoken.<\/p>\n As a little girl, Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot asked her mother why it was that she couldn\u2019t race in the Tour de France. \u201cBut it\u2019s a men\u2019s race,\u201d came the response. \u201cI wish I was a boy,\u201d the nine-year-old Pauline said.<\/p>\n The French have waited a long time to see one of their own in the yellow jersey \u2013 36 years in women\u2019s racing and 40 in men\u2019s \u2013 and endured decades of humiliation plus an ingrained sense of inferiority, usually to multiple foreign champions, some of them doped.<\/p>\n During that time, there have been other misfiring women\u2019s tours of France, but none of them compare with the significance and scale of the modern Tour de France Femmes<\/a>, which Christian Prudhomme, race director of the men\u2019s Tour and initially sceptical of the women\u2019s race, now sees as equal in stature.<\/p>\n For archivists, the last French rider in yellow was Jeannie Longo, who won the Tour de France F\u00e9minin in 1989, although that race did not compare with the investment, difficulty and global importance of the modern Tour Femmes.<\/p>\n Justifiably, Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot has been depicted as the successor to Bernard Hinault, the last French winner of the men\u2019s Tour. The celebratory televised phone call from President Macron, within minutes of her victory in Ch\u00e2tel, is evidence of that.<\/p>\n Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s Olympic gold came while she was sponsored by Ineos Grenadiers, but their reluctance to invest further in women\u2019s racing led to her off\u2011season move to the Visma Lease-a-bike team, and a vow to win the Tour within three years. Jim Ratcliffe\u2019s loss has become the Dutch sponsor\u2019s gain.<\/p>\n For the French, this was equivalent to England men\u2019s long\u2011awaited home Ashes win in 2005, or Andy Murray\u2019s breakthrough British Wimbledon victory in 2013. The 33-year-old may well have uncorked fresh ambition within the host nation, and not just in women\u2019s racing.<\/p>\n