“Paris is just 3 years, proper?” That’s how Lotte Kopecky signed off from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 on Instagram, with an image of herself in tears after two crashes on the monitor and fourth within the street race left her disenchanted and and not using a medal at her second Games.
However, since having to drag out of the Omnium, her remaining occasion in Tokyo, injured and devastated, Kopecky has left a profitable mark on nearly the whole lot she’s touched after becoming a member of one of the best staff in ladies’s biking – SD Worx-Protime. Be it the hellingen of her house Tour of Flanders, the pavé of Paris-Roubaix or the boards on the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, Tokyo lit the torch for Kopecky to rise to ladies’s biking’s pinnacle.
Multi-discipline World Champion, Tour de France Femmes stage winner, inexperienced jersey and runner-up, Classics celebrity and serial winner. Kopecky has been a dominant power for her commerce staff and Belgium for the previous three years. However, now that Paris 2024 has arrived, she should ship with gold.
“I went there [Tokyo 2020] within the street race with not that many expectations, and I acquired fourth. But I had, along with Jolien D’hoore, plenty of expectations on the monitor, and we actually went there for a medal,” Kopecky advised Cyclingnews as she recounted what Tokyo meant for her profession.
“With crashes, the whole lot that we labored for and understanding it was the final likelihood for Jolien, it simply didn’t work out. At that second, you’re simply so disenchanted since you assume your likelihood is over.
“But if I see the place I’m now then, I do know that I simply have one other likelihood this yr.”
31 of her 45 professional wins have come after Tokyo 2020, with 18 on the WorldTour stage. Kopecky headed into Rio 2016 at 20-year-old – the youngest rider within the street race and Tokyo 2020 as a medal hope on the monitor. She enters Paris 2024 as a totally completely different rider and because the RR World Champion and particular person world title holder in two of the 4 Omnium occasions.
After a bout with COVID-19 following the Giro d’Italia Women, the place she took a stage win and second total, three medals is what she had her eyes on, in final Saturday’s time trial, the upcoming street race on Sunday, August 4 and the Omnium on August 11. One has already gone amiss, with a crash on the moist roads of Paris throughout the ITT forcing her to accept sixth, 25 seconds off the rostrum.
By all accounts, Kopecky was happy along with her efficiency numbers, however in fact, sixth place harm for a rider so used to the highest step of podiums, particularly understanding it was one in all her best-ever time trials.
Now the stress will flip to the street race, the place alongside Julie Van de Velde, Justine Ghekiere and Margot Vanpachtenbeke, they are going to search for Belgium’s first-ever medal of any color within the ladies’s Olympic street race because it was launched in 1984 and gained by Connie Carpenter-Phinney (USA).
What an Olympic title would imply
Belgium has lengthy been a superpower in males’s biking however hasn’t fairly had the identical influence on the ladies’s facet in current many years because the Netherlands continues to be the primary participant. Kopecky’s world title in 2023 was the primary in 50 years from a Belgian ladies’s rider. However, an Olympic gold medal could be an even bigger prize but.
“For me, I hope will probably be the spotlight of my season. It’s essential, and I believe I’m in the important thing years of my profession, so I wish to profit from it. Paris is among the large targets,” mentioned Kopecky earlier than explaining simply what it will imply to win on the street race or monitor.
“First of all, I’m not there but, however I’m actually aiming for this Olympic medal. I believe that will probably be laborious sufficient, but when I can at some point win the Olympics, will probably be a day that not many days will go.” The greatest win of her profession? “Probably sure,” she admitted when talking in regards to the street race.
Track has continued to be an enormous purpose for Kopecky even amid her street success, with the crashes within the Madison and Omnium being probably the most disappointing a part of Tokyo 2020 for her. Such was her intent in vying for an Olympic medal within the self-discipline that she opted out of using this yr’s Tour de France Femmes.
If Kopecky is to realize it within the street race, it is going to once more be the Dutch she’s most anxious about, with a star-studded staff of Lorena Wiebes, Demi Vollering, Marianne Vos and Ellen van Dijk. Alongside a well-oiled Belgian machine in Glasgow, her teammates stored management for his or her chief to hit out for the rainbow jersey.
There will probably be a bunch of different stars to cope with, too, together with Kasia Niewiadoma (Poland), Elisa Longo Borghini (Italy) and newly-crowned time trial Olympic Champion Grace Brown (Australia).
On the Classics-style 157.6km course that heads west and again into Paris for the Pont D’lena end, Kopecky, whereas desirous to win solo as she did in Glasgow, will probably be assured in profitable a small group dash towards almost anybody besides the dominant sprinter Wiebes, for whom she has spent plenty of 2024 doing lead-outs for at SD Worx.
“A course that, particularly within the remaining, is tailored for her,” is how Belgium ladies’s street staff coach Ludwig Willems described it to HLN. “But in fact, there are others like that. Lotte [Kopecky] wants a selective race that’s made laborious early and causes fatigue to creep into the peloton earlier than we attain Paris once more.
“Hopefully, we are going to discover a lot of allies in that tactic. First of all, we have now to eliminate the quick and robust Lorena Wiebes. If we achieve that, then rather a lot can occur.”
Kopecky and Wiebes are the odds-on favourites with simply three days to go till Anna Kiesenhofer’s successor is determined, and whereas that stress has constructed extra along with her crash within the ITT, Kopecky has proven she has what it takes to thrive within the large event.
“It’s not straightforward, however you additionally learn to take care of it [pressure]. It doesn’t imply, even when – and I’m not saying I’m however – even if you’re one of the best rider within the peloton, it doesn’t imply you win each race,” mentioned Kopecky to Cyclingnews. “Every race must be ridden, so I’ll simply attempt to do my finest, keep calm and give attention to what I’ve to do.”