Pauline Ferrand-Prevot has put an end to her 2016 season after a disappointing Olympic Games that saw her place 26th in the women’s road race and then abandon the mountain bike event on Saturday.
In a lengthy post about her troubled season on her social media accounts, Ferrand-Prevot wrote that cycling had “become a nightmare” and questioned whether winning world titles in three disciplines – road, mountain bike and cyclo-cross – in the space of a year had been “the worst thing” that could have happened to her.
Ferrand-Prevot’s 2016 campaign was hampered by a tibial plateau stress fracture sustained in the winter, and she felt that she made a mistake in returning to training too hastily. “I came back too fast and too strongly, without listening to the advice of my coach, who told me to build back up slowly,” Ferrand-Prevot wrote.
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11th in Strade Bianche and 8th at the Tour of Flanders were the stand-out showings for Ferrand-Prevot early in the season, but she was beset by problems with allergies after relocating to the south of France in the spring. Ferrand-Prevot said that she treated the allergies with corticoids after a three-week course of anti-biotics had failed to remedy the issue.
“As the anti-doping rules stipulate, you’re not allowed to take part in competition for ten days [after using corticoids – ed.] Those were ten days in which I trained even harder again to try to lose the least amount of time possible,” Ferrand-Prevot wrote.
Ferrand-Prevot was forced to take a further break from competition in May and June, when she was troubled by sciatica, a lingering effect from her knee problem of the winter. Two lumbar epidurals did little to improve the situation. “Every training ride was an ordeal,” she wrote. “I was riding, but at the pace of a cyclo-tourist.
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