Pauline Ferrand-Prevot is a legend of the sport.

The French rider has won almost everything there is to win in the world of cycling. A talent on the road as much as she is in the field, she has an incredible legacy secured whenever she decides to leave the sport.

Until today there was a gap on her resume that she desperately wanted to fill. The Olympic title eluded her. Whilst in previous years she has claiming four world titles in the same year and cementing her status as one of the best bike riders in the world, she couldn’t put it together on the day for the Olympics themselves.

That is, until July 28th 2024.

From lap one, she rode away from the competition and left a gulf between herself and them by the end. A three-minute gap is the sort of distance you’d expect from first to tenth, not the gap from gold medal to silver.

Whilst she was winning the race with relative ease, there was chaos behind her. The Dutchwoman, Puck Pieterse, was riding strongly until she got a puncture, forcing her to ride to the feed-tech zone for her mechanics to replace the wheel. She had initially kept the gap to Ferrand-Prevot to half a minute but that gap soon increased.

Ferrand-Prevot’s compatriot, Loana Lecomte, was challenging Pieterse but came down in a nasty fall and had to withdraw from the race.

Hayley Batten (USA) started the race relatively slowly but grew through the race to claim silver.

Rio 2016 winner Jenny Rissveds (SWE) came third to take the bronze medal.

But for the crowd in Elancourt, only one story mattered and as shouts of ‘Allez Pauline!’ were bellowed out on the course, Ferrand-Prevot duly obliged and completed her goals in mountain biking. She will now focus on road cycling; this being her last mountain bike race.

Here, she was a dominant force with no comparison, her legacy more than cemented.