After three years of dominating the European Championships, French mountain bikers Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Loana Lecomte lost sharply on Sunday to Dutch prodigy Puck Pieterse, on the slopes of Krynica-Zdrój (Poland). “I’m a little disappointed, but it’s not the end of the world”, however reacted after the race “PFP”, quadruple world champion and 19th at the finish. “The objective of the year remains the Worlds (in Glasgow in August)”, she recalled.
“I was quickly unhooked”
La Rémoise, titled in 2020 and 2021, has long remained a few seconds from 3rd place. But a puncture at the start of the 14th kilometer destroyed his chances of a medal. “I had to do half a lap with a punctured wheel, it wasn’t the most fun but I tried to finish as best I could,” she said. Loana Lecomte, defending champion and ranked 5th in the end, was put in difficulty at the start, on a technical course alternating muddy forest passages, bumps and spectacular climbs in the Polish mountains.
“I was quickly unhooked… I felt that I was not at the top of the top. There were big sequences, but I gave everything”, declared the Savoyard. On the men’s side, the young Mathis Azzaro finished 34th. For the French side, who arrived with the ambition to do well at these European Championships which take place within the framework of the European Games, this is a poor performance to forget one year before the Olympic Games at home.
Party climbing
Despite a very busy schedule in June with two World Cup stages in particular, the two French riders, favorites, were keen to achieve a result as good as in Munich last year (Lecomte 1st, Ferrand-Prévot 2nd). But the Dutch Puck Pieterse, 21, current leader of the World Cup standings, largely dominated the race, organized as part of the European Games, which are held until July 2 in Poland.
If the French mountain bike missed its day, the tricolor climbers were able to celebrate their harvest in climbing, which brought three of the four gold medals of the French delegation. Thomas Lemagner, 17, won the bouldering event on Sunday. On Friday, Marceau Garnier had won a first silver medal in speed and on Saturday, the young Camille Pouget won the difficulty test, before Zéliaavezou took silver in the same test.
And at the end of the Polish night, it was the Savoyard Diego Fourbet, among the men, who crushed the competition, still in difficulty. In other sports, the brothers Alexis and Felix Lebrun, French table tennis hopefuls, qualified without trembling for the quarter-finals of the individual table on Monday in Krakow. During the European Athletics Team Championship, France, which came to Poland without most of its stars, finished in 7th position, far behind Italy (1st), Poland (2nd) and Germany (3rd). ).