Pauline Ferrand-Prévot will begin her 2026 road season on the white roads of Strade Bianche with the sort of resume that tends to change how an entire peloton races you.
A year ago, she arrived in Tuscany still thinking like a mountain biker returning to a familiar surface. Twelve months on, she is arriving as the reigning Tour de France Femmes winner and Paris-Roubaix Femmes champion, and she has no interest in downplaying what that has done to her belief.
“I feel better than a year ago,” she said ahead of Saturday’s race, framing the start of the Classics as a mixture of excitement and nerves, “like a first day back at school”.
Ferrand-Prévot and Marianne Vos will lead Team Visma | Lease a Bike through Strade Bianche and into the wider Spring block, giving the Dutch team a pairing that blends experience, calm, and a ruthless sense of how to win hard races.
Photo Credit: GettyWhat Ferrand-Prévot learned from last year’s Strade Bianche
Strade Bianche has never been short of drama for Ferrand-Prévot. It will be her fifth attempt at the race, and she has already seen both sides of the experience: the feeling of being perfectly suited to the course, and the reality that it can bite back quickly.
Last season, a crash ended her chances and left her with a clear sense of what needed changing. Having rewatched the race, she feels she burned matches too early, particularly by forcing herself into moves that did not need to be followed.
Her conclusion is simple: if she wants to be strongest where Strade is decided, on the final sequence of sectors and the steep rise into Siena, she has to arrive there with more in the tank than she managed last time.
That is the key shift she keeps returning to. Less emotion, more calculation, and a more economical use of energy across the long middle hour where the race can feel deceptively stable.
A different starting point: “Last year I still felt like a MTB rider”
Ferrand-Prévot is not pretending the learning curve has disappeared. Road racing still has its own rhythm, its own positioning battles, and its own tactical traps.
But she is adamant she is no longer arriving as a rider trying to translate one discipline into another. The training, the mindset, and the expectations are now those of a full-time road leader.
That matters at Strade Bianche, where the race can be won by strength but just as easily lost through poor timing, bad positioning into a sector, or spending too much energy in the wrong places. Ferrand-Prévot’s emphasis on “saving energy” is not a cliché. It is her most practical point about how she wants to race on Saturday.
Why the Ronde of Flanders sits high on her list
Ferrand-Prévot has been open that Strade Bianche and the Tour of Flanders were her first two major objectives of the season, and she has described Flanders as the monument she finds most compelling.
The build-up, the tension, the constant fight for position, and the intensity of the Belgian roadside all appeal to her. It is the kind of race that can feel like chaos from the outside, but is actually a long series of decisions and efforts that reward riders who can stay composed while still being aggressive.
For a rider who won Roubaix and the Tour in her first season back on the road, it is not hard to see why she would want to add the Tour of Flanders to the list next.
Vos returns after an imperfect winter, but says she is ready
Vos, meanwhile, starts her season with a Strade Bianche record that is quietly impressive. In her last five appearances, she has finished in the top ten each time, even if the podium has remained out of reach.
She has admitted her winter was not ideal, but her message ahead of Saturday is that she feels ready to race. Vos also underlined what Strade demands, not just legs but team support and good positioning into the decisive phases.
Her role alongside Ferrand-Prévot is one of the more intriguing dynamics of the early season. They share some characteristics, but they are not the same rider, and the team’s best outcome may come from how well they can play those differences rather than forcing a single plan too early.
Strade Bianche as the first real test of Ferrand-Prévot’s 2026 level
Training can suggest form. Racing confirms it.
Ferrand-Prévot has said she feels stronger than she did a year ago, but she also acknowledges that she has not yet lined up against the rest of the peloton. Strade Bianche is a race where that uncertainty disappears quickly.
If she is right about her condition, and if she gets through the key sectors without wasting energy, she has every reason to believe she can fight for the win. If she is wrong, Strade has a habit of exposing it brutally.
Either way, her return gives the Spring Classics a sharper edge from day one, because she is no longer the comeback story. She is one of the riders everyone else has to solve.
