Ferrand-Prévot struggling after surgery: "We tried to hide the misery throughout the whole season"

After having to withdraw from the European Championships in her own country, Ferrand-Prévot was finally able to undergo surgery. Her left ankle had been bothering her since March and needed to be operated on. The procedure was successful, but the Frenchwoman is suffering considerably. “I'm having a bit of a hard time,” she told Ouest France. “At first, I had no pain at all, but in the last few days I've started to feel it a little.”

It was not until October that they had time to address the problem. "Perhaps we did not clean the wound properly, and something got into it. Every time I felt a little tired, I became nauseous and developed a fever. That happened just before Paris-Roubaix. The same thing happened when I returned from the World Championships in Rwanda. We had an MRI done and saw that it wasn't perfect.“

And so, one day after withdrawing from the European Championships, she had to undergo surgery. This came after a long season in which they constantly ignored the problem. “I went to the hospital twice, where they cleaned it, but they couldn't open it up and operate on it like we did a few days ago. We tried to hide the problem a little bit throughout the season.”

Ferrand-Prévot is now paying the price for that. Fortunately, she can relax and do nothing on the Costa Blanca, where she is spending time with her fiancé, Dylan van Baarle. “This time it’s more of a recovery period. It’s taking a while, but we’re trying to remember the good times this year and tell ourselves that it gives us the chance to recover and get off to a good start again.”