The last time La Marseillaise was heard blasting out during the podium ceremony at the end of a Tour de France, a crowd of delirious home fans raucously singing along, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot wasn’t even born.
On 23 July 1989, on the same day Laurent Fignon lost the yellow jersey by eight seconds to Greg LeMond on the Champs-Élysées, Fignon’s compatriot Jeannie Longo celebrated winning her third consecutive Tour de France Féminin title.
That third maillot jaune for Longo, the dominant rider of her generation and an iconic if controversial figurehead of French women’s cycling to this day, came four years after Bernard Hinault’s fifth and final Tour triumph, which remains, 40 years on, the last time a Frenchman won his home grand tour.
Longo’s victory also proved the end of an era, and not just for French cycling. When it was first revived in 1984 by race organiser Félix Lévitan, the Tour de France Féminin was a proper grand tour, running concurrently with the men’s event and featuring many of its iconic roads and mountains.
But despite its links to the men’s race, the Tour Féminin retained an amateur-style, hard-scrabble feel, and was barely promoted beyond those taking part and the people they passed on the roadside.
The ‘grand tour’ aspect of the race was also increasingly diluted as interest struggled to ignite. By Longo’s third win in 1989, it had been reduced to an 11-day race and was almost 300km shorter than its 1984 equivalent.
> The Tour de France Femmes’ Long and Winding Road: A brief history of the women’s Tour de France
At the end of 1989, incoming Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc scrapped the Tour Féminin, citing the commercial and financial concerns of running a race with limited media coverage and sponsorship (Leblanc missing the irony, clearly, of who was responsible for drumming up that interest).
A splinter event designed to keep the race alive, the less evocatively titled Tour of the EEC, was held the following year and was won, in fact, by another French rider, the four-time world champion Catherine Marshal. But the Tour’s name, and the subsequent prestige and exposure, was gone – and would remain gone until ASO eventually, finally, belatedly revived the women’s Tour de France in 2022.
That long Tour drought meant that Jeannie Longo – not Bernard Hinault, despite the insistence of some commentators this week – remained the last French rider to win the Tour de France. Until today.
On Sunday evening in Châtel, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot ended 36 years of French hurt at the Tour. And potentially, kickstarted a brand-new era for her sport.
On her Tour debut, in her comeback year on the road, the multidisciplinary superstar sealed a historic overall victory at her home race with two expertly taken stage wins in the Alps, where she proved she was head and shoulders above the best riders in the world.
After narrowly missing out on a fairytale victory on the opening stage in Plumelec, Ferrand-Prévot focused her attention on GC, gliding through the race’s frenetic journey south as rivals – including 2023 winner Demi Vollering – were beset by troubles.
And then, in the Alps, the 33-year-old – who had previously only ever won one stage race during her career, the 2014 Emakumeen Euskal Bira – simply destroyed the opposition.
On the monstrous Col de Madeleine, she made light work of following the peloton’s best climber, Sarah Gigante, before dispatching the Australian and building an almost two-minute lead by the summit. Vollering and defending Tour champion, Kasia Niewiadoma, meanwhile, were over three minutes back.
And on today’s final, relentless stage in the Alps, after being briefly caught out on the opening descent, Ferrand-Prévot remained ice cool as Vollering and Niewiadoma combined to oust Gigante from the podium.
On the outskirts of Châtel, as the road ramped up, the Visma-Lease a Bike leader accelerated hard, and was never seen again. Cue emotional scenes at the finish and the opening strains of La Marseillaise.
🤩 French Pride 🇫🇷 @FERRANDPREVOT has done France proud !
🤩 Fierté française 🇫🇷 PAULINE fait honneur à la France avec la première Marseillaise !
| #WatchTheFemmes | @gozwift pic.twitter.com/E8QmNJfOYw
— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) August 3, 2025
The fact that Ferrand-Prévot is even riding the Tour, never mind winning it, is remarkable in itself.
Following an astonishing breakthrough 2014 season – which saw her win the world road race championships as a 22-year-old, becoming the first rider in history to hold rainbow jerseys for road, mountain biking, and cyclocross at the same time – Ferrand-Prévot slowly drifted from the pro peloton, jaded by the pressure and weight of expectation placed upon her shoulders.
Instead, she focused on mountain biking, a career choice that saw her accumulate 15 world titles across four disciplines and which culminated in a sensational Olympic gold medal-winning ride in front of home fans at last year’s Paris Games.
With mountain biking complete, Ferrand-Prévot returned to the road this year – and a very different peloton to the one she left, thanks to women’s cycling’s great leap forward in recent years.
Not that it took long for the 33-year-old to hit her stride. She finished third at Strade Bianche in March, then took second at the Tour of Flanders, before following that up with the big one – winning Paris-Roubaix, a race that didn’t exist when she last raced full-time on the road, with a stunning solo ride on the cobbles.
After her debut Vuelta was cut short through illness, all eyes turned to the Tour, the race that captivated her as a youngster, one that until now seemed so far out of reach, a relic of the past, a race seemingly not meant for women.
Ferrand-Prévot admitted upon her return to the peloton that she wanted to win the Tour de France Femmes within three years. She did it in less than eight months.
“It may have looked easy, but it was the result of a lot of work,” she said at the finish today, her yellow jersey secured.
“I think I have really set the bar this year on how to prepare for the Tour. I have made a lot of sacrifices. I thought about that yesterday, and I talked about it this morning with my teammates. This victory shows that it was worth it.”
Ferrand-Prévot’s yellow jersey may be worth a lot more than even she realises.
The French sporting public, whose relationship with cycling has proved tumultuous throughout the last four decades, fell back in love with the Tour this week. The crowds at the side of the road were large and electric.
When it comes to the TV figures in France, the number of people watching Ferrand-Prévot’s victory on the Madeleine were higher than those who tuned in for the queen stage of the men’s Tour, a race where accusations of boredom proliferated throughout the final days, on the Col de la Loze.
The Tour de France Femmes has helped revolutionise women’s cycling. But this week in particular feels like a real watershed moment.
And it could be just the start. Ferrand-Prévot’s overall victory may have driven the narrative, but Maeva Squiban’s double stage-winning subplot could prove just as important in the long term.
The 22-year-old’s swashbuckling performances earned the plaudits of Emmanuel Macron and cemented her as Ferrand-Prévot’s heir apparent, before the Visma-Lease a Bike rider had even been crowned.
On the podium in Châtel this evening, as La Marseillaise drifted through the air and the bleu, blanc, et rouge flew proudly, Ferrand-Prévot was joined by France’s last cycling queen, Jeannie Longo.
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot 🫂 Jeannie Longo
La passation est faite entre deux immenses championnes du cyclisme féminin. #TDFF2025 l #WatchTheFemmes pic.twitter.com/14jEoni8JM
— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) August 3, 2025
That symbolic image captured the past and present of French cycling, as well as serving as a reminder of how far women’s cycling has come, and how far it has left to go.
Add Squiban into the mix, and a public gripped by their own race and some home heroines to cheer on once again, and the future is looking very bright for French cycling after four decades of hurt.
The yellow jersey has finally come home. And they never stopped dreaming.
10 thoughts on “Yellow’s coming home: Pauline Ferrand-Prévot ends 36 years of French hurt with historic Tour de France Femmes win – but what does it mean for women’s cycling?”
Monumental!
Monumental!
“That long Tour drought meant
“That long Tour drought meant that Jeannie Longo – not Bernard Hinault, despite the insistence of some commentators this week – remained the last French rider to win the Tour de France. Until today.” Well done Road.cc for pointing this out!
I started to watch this on TG4 but after a few days it was geo blocked for UK viewers. Pity as the latter stages looked really good. Some coverage on YouTube.
The men’s race these days is so predictable but it’s good to see the opposite for the ladies race. Geez these gals can go some, downhill too – no fear. Chappeau.
CountryBumkin wrote:
If you want to support women’s sport – as you clearly do – call them women, not ladies or gals. It’s the Tour de France Femmes, not dames or filles.
The England women’s football
The England women’s football side refer to themselves as girls.
The men often refer to their team-mates as the boys.
🤷♂️
As long as the common nouns used are respectful and made with good intentions, who cares.
How people refer to
How people refer to themselves is not necessarily an appropriate way for others to refer to them, all depends on register and context. If a BBC news announcer said “The England girls returned home from their Euros triumph today” that would quite rightly be seen as patronising, as is referring to women cyclists as “gals” (as indeed is lauding them for something that all top professionals can, and indeed are expected to, do, “Geez these gals can go some, downhill too – no fear” – wow they didn’t start crying or go down hanging onto the brakes for dear life, bless the little darlings…).
I literally just said as long
I literally just said as long as they were respectful, in the context of a BBC news reader, that would not be respectful.
We don’t half tie ourselves in knots, and I’m quite a leftie 🤣
dodgy wrote:
In my opinion, and that of many women I know, it’s not respectful for anyone to refer to women as girls unless it’s women referring to themselves, e.g. “I’m going for a night out with the girls”. I believe surveys have shown that around 50% of women aged under 30 find it unacceptable for women to be called girls; the bottom line is, no women are going to be offended by being called women and a substantial proportion will be offended by being called girls, so why not choose the option that will offend nobody?
I prefer the term women
I prefer the term women anyway, though I have used ‘ladies’.
Strike me down.
After 36 years in thé French
After 36 years in thé French Pyrénées I should bé used to thé demented chauvinism of French cycling commentators but thé 2025 Female tour was really too much. I got to thé point that I stoppéd watching TV France 2’s Vélo Club. Delighted that Pauline had a well-deserved win.
The comments in here are part
The comments in here are part of the problem .Bunch of simps arguing on whats the correct thing to say when adressing Female cycling .
Pathetic disnt quite cover it