With the Tour de France barely over, French cyclists from all disciplines are back in the saddle for the World Cycling Championships taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, from August 3 to 13.
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot in mountain biking, Christophe Laporte on the road, Cédrine Kerbaol in the time trial, Mathilde Gros on the track and Anthony Jeanjean in BMX will be able to make their final adjustments before the Olympic Games in Paris next year.
La Rémoise, four-time cross-country world champion (2015, 2019, 2020, 2022), is having a bumpy start to the season. Well launched in the race for the general classification of the World Cup – she is in 2nd place after five stages – she went through two difficult summer months with a disappointing 19th place at the European Championships in Poland in June and, above all, a heavy fall in Val di Sole (Italy) at the beginning of July, putting a two-week halt to his preparation for the Worlds.
Affected in the knee, the presence of the Ineos-Grenadiers pilot in Glasgow was very uncertain until she was officially called by the staff of the France team on July 15. To defend her title, she will have to face the young Dutch prodigy Puck Pieterse, 21, who crushed the competition in Poland.
If coach Thomas Voeckler has not at this stage appointed a leader for Sunday’s road race, the one who comes closest to this status is Christophe Laporte. Because the Varois, vice-world champion of the title, is on his feet as his Tour de France showed.
But also because of the course which perfectly suits his profile as a classics runner, who is fast, resistant and all-terrain. The French champion Valentin Madouas and the former double world champion Julian Alaphilippe constitute other assets of the French team in particular against the Belgian armada of Remco Evenepoel and Wout Van Aert, Laporte’s teammate at Jumbo-Visma . The event will take place on August 6 on a 272.4 km circuit, with 480 turns in 10 passes on top of a wall (100 meters at 10%).
She aspires to become one of the stars of the Paris Olympics for which she made a date last year by becoming world champion in individual speed, the queen event, on the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome. where the Games will be held in a year’s time. In Glasgow, the sprinter wants to “start from scratch” to “find this rainbow jersey like last year.
She will also aim for gold in the keirin and will want to continue to progress in team speed with Marie-Divine Kouamé and Julie Michaux. Overall, the French cyclists will be ambitious in Glasgow after their fine harvest at the 2022 Worlds (7 medals, including 3 gold).
Revelation of the Tour de France with a 12th place overall and the white jersey of best young rider, the Breton has established herself as an “indisputable” holder for the road race on Sunday August 13. The Finistère, who arrived late in cycling, had already stood out at the end of June in Cassel (North) by becoming French champion in the time trial ahead of the experienced Audrey Cordon-Ragot. A coronation which led coach Paul Brousse to also retain her for the World Championships on Thursday August 10 alongside Juliette Labous, the spearhead of the Bleues.
One year before the Paris Games, the BMX Freestyle Park event is a major test for Anthony Jeanjean. Triple European champion (2019, 2021, 2022), the Héraultais is one of the rare riders from the Old Continent to be able to worry the Australians and the Americans, who have always dominated in this spectacular discipline. After winning a silver medal at the European Championships in Poland in June and winning a World Cup stage in July in Belgium – his 2nd in his career – Jeanjean arrives full of confidence in Glasgow where the qualification phase begins on Saturday. .
