Since all the world is talking about Pauline Ferand-Prévot’s weight this week, I thought I’d weigh in. It seems to me that a competitive athlete will do what she needs to do in order to win, if that’s what her intention is. From my understanding from what PFP has actually said, she lost weight for this Tour and that she doesn’t intend for it to be forever. She also insists that it wasn’t ‘extreme’ and that it left her with plenty of power to get through a tough stage race.
This debate will die soon, but it might resurface again when we see other riders railing down for Grand Tours. Then again, this really shouldn’t be any surprise – look at the podium from this year’s men’s race.
And here’s the women’s.
You see the difference? Me neither.
But there is no doubt that Grand Tour winners are slighter (or at least lighter) than they used to be. Remember Jan Ulrich? How about 5-time TDF winner Miguel Indurain?
Big Mig weighed 76kg. Pog is 66kg and Jonas is a mere 60kg. How did Indurain manage 5 Tours de France in a row? Because he was an amazing time trialist (he never won a non-TT stage) and the Tours back then had plenty of them…and they were long. In the 90s the Tour had between 130km and 160km of time trials. This year we saw 44km.
The focus has shifted to the mountains, where power-to-weight reigns, and there are two ways to increase that; pump up your power and lose weight.
This year’s Tour de France Femmes was always going to be decided on Stage 8, which was a mountain finish on the Col de la Madeleine. You design a tour like this, you will have athletes doing what is necessary to win.
The Vicious Cycle 
Most MS media written by men, who love to comment on the female form, tbh she didn’t look any thinner than most of the the female club riders i know.
I find it an odd phenomenon, apart from click-baity aspect of the ‘news’. This debate has been beaten to death in cycling.
Absolutely
Here’s an article from 2022, when PFP was reflecting on another medal-less Olympics. While it touches on her experience with RED-S, the far more interesting point of the article is her extreme focus, in this case for Paris 2024. She moved to Frejus to be near her technical coach, which she had identified as her weakness. She hung out at the pump track with kids. That kind of thing.
For the TDFF she moved to Andorra to live and climb at altitude….and incidentally, also lost a few kilos. All those other pros wringing their hands about the lost kilos and bad examples, I suspect it’s a mix of sour grapes and naïveté. The woman’s been through 4 Olympic cycles. The TDFF was not her first rodeo!
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/profile-pauline-ferrand-prevot-on-training-with-cecile-ravanel-depression-disordered-eating-and-more.html
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next year, if PFP has somehow elevated the level in the peloton a bit.