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“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 observe and fourth within the highway race left her disillusioned and with out a medal at her second Video games.
Nevertheless, since having to drag out of the Omnium, her last occasion in Tokyo, injured and devastated, Kopecky has left a successful mark on virtually the whole lot she’s touched after becoming a member of the most effective staff in girls’s biking – SD Worx-Protime. Be it the hellingen of her residence 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 girls’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. Nevertheless, now that Paris 2024 has arrived, she should ship with gold.
“I went there [Tokyo 2020] within the highway race with not that many expectations, and I bought fourth. However I had, along with Jolien D’hoore, a number of expectations on the observe, and we actually went there for a medal,” Kopecky instructed 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 disillusioned since you suppose your likelihood is over.
“But when I see the place I’m now then, I do know that I simply have one other likelihood this 12 months.”
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 highway race and Tokyo 2020 as a medal hope on the observe. She enters Paris 2024 as a very totally 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 Girls, 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 highway 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 in the course of the ITT forcing her to accept sixth, 25 seconds off the rostrum.
By all accounts, Kopecky was happy along with her efficiency numbers, however after all, sixth place damage for a rider so used to the highest step of podiums, particularly understanding it was certainly one of her best-ever time trials.
Now the stress will flip to the highway 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 girls’s Olympic highway 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 affect on the ladies’s aspect 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 girls’s rider. Nevertheless, an Olympic gold medal is perhaps a much bigger prize but.
“For me, I hope will probably be the spotlight of my season. It’s crucial, and I believe I’m in the important thing years of my profession, so I want to benefit from it. Paris is likely one of the massive targets,” stated Kopecky earlier than explaining simply what it will imply to win on the highway race or observe.
“Initially, I’m not there but, however I’m actually aiming for this Olympic medal. I believe that will likely be laborious sufficient, but when I can someday win the Olympics, will probably be a day that not many days will cross.” The largest win of her profession? “In all probability sure,” she admitted when talking in regards to the highway race.
Observe has continued to be an enormous aim for Kopecky even amid her highway success, with the crashes within the Madison and Omnium being essentially 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 12 months’s Tour de France Femmes.
If Kopecky is to realize it within the highway race, it should once more be the Dutch she’s most frightened 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 saved management for his or her chief to hit out for the rainbow jersey.
There will likely be a bunch of different stars to take care of, 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 likely be assured in successful a small group dash towards practically anybody besides the dominant sprinter Wiebes, for whom she has spent a number of 2024 doing lead-outs for at SD Worx.
“A course that, particularly within the last, is tailored for her,” is how Belgium girls’s highway staff coach Ludwig Willems described it to HLN. “However after all, 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 numerous allies in that tactic. Initially, we’ve to do away with the quick and robust Lorena Wiebes. If we achieve that, then quite a bit 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 massive event.
“It’s not straightforward, however you additionally discover ways to take care of it [pressure]. It doesn’t imply, even when – and I’m not saying I’m however – even if you’re the most effective rider within the peloton, it doesn’t imply you win each race,” stated Kopecky to Cyclingnews. “Each race must be ridden, so I’ll simply attempt to do my finest, keep calm and give attention to what I’ve to do.”
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