{"id":62972,"date":"2025-08-12T03:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T03:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/62972\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T03:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T03:13:11","slug":"i-lost-weight-purely-for-this-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/62972\/","title":{"rendered":"I lost weight purely for this race"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot also pushed back against the idea she had
\nrestricted herself excessively.<\/p>\n

“But I didn’t
\nbefore the Tour either. Not because I was afraid, but because I didn’t think
\nabout it. I didn’t do anything crazy. I didn’t want to have stomach problems
\neither; I just ate what I wanted.” Since the Tour, she has relaxed her
\ndiet: “I think I’ve gained a bit of weight since then, because I didn’t
\nreally pay attention to my diet. I had pizza once. But I eat all sorts of
\nthings and I enjoy it. That’s the most important thing.”<\/p>\n

She emphasized that the process was a team effort. “She
\nworks with everything we have at our disposal,” said head coach Jacco
\nVerhaeren. “She’s being guided very professionally. As an older,
\nprofessional athlete, she has experience in optimally preparing for a top
\nperformance. We had to find a middle ground there, and we did.”<\/p>\n

Verhaeren stressed that the weight management program was
\nwell-managed: “Everything is monitored, everything is considered, and
\neverything is transparent. So we had no concerns. Weight is just one aspect;
\nit’s also about fitness, strength, and teamwork.”<\/p>\n

He acknowledged that weight is an ongoing conversation in
\nelite sport, “We all have weight issues in sports, but with this team,
\nwe’re paying 100% attention to it. It wasn’t too much or too little; it was
\njust right.”<\/p>\n

The debate has spread beyond Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s camp. Tour
\nrunner-up Demi Vollering<\/a> reflected on her own experiences, saying, “Now
\nthat I\u2019ve had a few days to put things into perspective, here\u2019s my personal
\nopinion on the \u2018weight topic\u2019. After the Tour, around 80% of the questions I
\nreceived in the final press conference were about my weight. Whether I planned
\nto lose more. Whether that would be the way to win the Tour de France again.
\nWhether that was the key to performance in the future.”<\/p>\n

Vollering stressed her approach to health over numbers,
\n“I get it, this is sport. People are enthusiastic and have opinions. But
\nlet me be clear: I make, and will continue to make, every decision in my career
\nby putting my health first. Always. The truth is: I\u2019m not built to be the
\nlightest rider in the peloton. And I don\u2019t want to force my body to become
\nsomething it\u2019s not.”<\/p>\n

Former Vuelta champion Chris Horner, meanwhile, took a more
\nperformance-driven view. \u201cYou\u2019re a professional cyclist. Weight is always going
\nto be a factor,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you\u2019re not going to have watts per kilo better
\nthan the rider next to you, then you better have tactics better than the rider
\nnext to you. Otherwise, you have zero chance of winning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot also pushed back against the idea she had restricted herself excessively. “But I didn’t before the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-62972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}