Former Russian champion and French prodigy add strength to Dutch team’s on- and off-road squads
Rabobank has announced the signing of Tatiana Antoshina and Pauline Ferrand Prevot to its women’s team, on one- and two-year contracts respectively. As a two-time junior mountainbike World champion, Ferrand Prevot (right) will spend most of the 2012 season in the team’s off road division – particularly as she targets an Olympic medal in London in the summer – while former Russian champion Antoshina will add strength to the road team.
Ferrand Prevot is one of the most exciting talents that French cycling has produced in recent years. A limited road programme in 2011 saw the 19-year-old take ninth place in the Trofeo Binda World Cup and seventh in la Fleche Wallonne; she then went on to take fifth place in both the GP Elsy Jacobs and GP Nicolas Frantz, before opting to concentrate solely on mountainbiking on the build up to the Olympics.
The Frenchwoman also races cyclocross, taking bronze in the recent European championships in Lucca, Italy, and finishing third in the women’s event at the Hamme-Zogge Superprestige.
Antoshina will already be familiar to new teammates Marianne Vos and Annemiek van Vleuten, having finished between them in April’s Ronde van Vlaanderen. It was the Russian’s attack, once other new teammate Sarah Düster’s long break had been pulled back, that saw her and van Vleuten ride away to take the first two places; Vos took the sprint for third.
The 29-year-old spent the 2011 season with Gauss, which is being absorbed by the MCipolllini team in 2012. As well as her second place in Flanders, Antoshina finished fifth in the Giro Donne, and won both the Gracia-Orlova and Trophee d’Or stage races.