Cycling - UCI World Championships 2023 - Glentress Forest, Peebles, Scotland, Britain - August 12, 2023 Gold medallist, France's Pauline Ferrand Prevot celebrates winning the Women's Elite Mountain Bike Cross-country Olympic on the podium REUTERS/Maja Smiejkowska
GLASGOW (Reuters) - Pauline Ferrand-Prevot completed a golden double at the UCI World Championships when she outclassed the field to win the mountain bike cross country title for a fifth time on Saturday.
The 31-year-old French rider attacked her compatriot Loana Lecomte on the second lap in a wet Glentress Forest and never looked back as she won by more than a minute.
Ferrand-Prevot also won the short track title this week.
"I'm feeling very happy. It was a super hard race, I didn't have a good start but I wanted to keep my own pace during all the race," she told reporters.
"It's what I did -- full gas on the uphill and then I tried to recover on the downhill and it worked out perfectly. I'm proud of myself because I kept my plan even though I didn't have a good start. I just said: 'I have one mission today and I have to reach it'."
The all-rounder now has five world titles in the cross country discipline which is the Olympic Games event.
Lecomte was second with Dutchwoman Puck Pieterse winning the scrap for the bronze medal.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman; editing by Clare Fallon)
