“Paris is only 3 years, right?” That’s how Lotte Kopecky signed off from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 on Instagram, with a picture of herself in tears after two crashes on the track and fourth in the road race left her disappointed and without a medal at her second Games.
However, since having to pull out of the Omnium, her final event in Tokyo, injured and devastated, Kopecky has left a winning mark on almost everything she’s touched after joining the best team in women's cycling - SD Worx-Protime. Be it the hellingen of her home Tour of Flanders, the pavé of Paris-Roubaix or the boards at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, Tokyo lit the torch for Kopecky to rise to women’s cycling’s pinnacle.
Multi-discipline World Champion, Tour de France Femmes stage winner, green jersey and runner-up, Classics superstar and serial winner. Kopecky has been a dominant force for her trade team and Belgium for the past three years. However, now that Paris 2024 has arrived, she must deliver with gold.
“I went there [Tokyo 2020] in the road race with not that many expectations, and I got fourth. But I had, together with Jolien D’hoore, a lot of expectations on the track, and we really went there for a medal,” Kopecky told Cyclingnews as she recounted what Tokyo meant for her career.
“With crashes, everything that we worked for and knowing it was the last chance for Jolien, it just didn’t work out. At that moment, you’re just so disappointed because you think your chance is over.
“But if I see where I am now then, I know that I just have another chance this year.”
31 of her 45 pro wins have come after Tokyo 2020, with 18 at the WorldTour level. Kopecky headed into Rio 2016 at 20-year-old - the youngest rider in the road race and Tokyo 2020 as a medal hope on the track. She enters Paris 2024 as a completely different rider and as the RR World Champion and individual world title holder in two of the four Omnium events.
After a bout with COVID-19 following the Giro d'Italia Women, where she took a stage win and second overall, three medals is what she had her eyes on, in last Saturday’s time trial, the upcoming road race on Sunday, August 4 and the Omnium on August 11. One has already gone amiss, with a crash on the wet roads of Paris during the ITT forcing her to settle for sixth, 25 seconds off the podium.
By all accounts, Kopecky was pleased with her performance numbers, but of course, sixth place hurt for a rider so used to the top step of podiums, especially knowing it was one of her best-ever time trials.
Now the pressure will turn to the road race, where alongside Julie Van de Velde, Justine Ghekiere and Margot Vanpachtenbeke, they will look for Belgium’s first-ever medal of any colour in the women’s Olympic road race since it was introduced in 1984 and won by Connie Carpenter-Phinney (USA).
What an Olympic title would mean
Belgium has long been a superpower in men’s cycling but hasn’t quite had the same impact on the women’s side in recent decades as the Netherlands continues to be the main player. Kopecky’s world title in 2023 was the first in 50 years from a Belgian women’s rider. However, an Olympic gold medal might be a bigger prize yet.
“For me, I hope it will be the highlight of my season. It’s very important, and I think I’m in the key years of my career, so I would like to make the most of it. Paris is one of the big objectives,” said Kopecky before explaining just what it would mean to win on the road race or track.
“First of all, I’m not there yet, but I’m really aiming for this Olympic medal. I think that will be hard enough, but if I can one day win the Olympics, it will be a day that not many days will pass.” The biggest win of her career? “Probably yes,” she admitted when speaking about the road race.
Track has continued to be a huge goal for Kopecky even amid her road success, with the crashes in the Madison and Omnium being the most disappointing part of Tokyo 2020 for her. Such was her intent in vying for an Olympic medal in the discipline that she opted out of riding this year’s Tour de France Femmes.
If Kopecky is to achieve it in the road race, it will again be the Dutch she’s most worried about, with a star-studded team of Lorena Wiebes, Demi Vollering, Marianne Vos and Ellen van Dijk. Alongside a well-oiled Belgian machine in Glasgow, her teammates kept control for their leader to hit out for the rainbow jersey.
There will be a host of other stars to contend with, too, including 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 back into Paris for the Pont D’lena finish, Kopecky, while wanting to win solo as she did in Glasgow, will be confident in winning a small group sprint against nearly anyone except the dominant sprinter Wiebes, for whom she has spent a lot of 2024 doing lead-outs for at SD Worx.
“A course that, especially in the final, is tailor-made for her,” is how Belgium women’s road team coach Ludwig Willems described it to HLN. “But of course, there are others like that. Lotte [Kopecky] needs a selective race that is made hard early and causes fatigue to creep into the peloton before we reach Paris again.
“Hopefully, we will find a number of allies in that tactic. First of all, we have to get rid of the fast and strong Lorena Wiebes. If we succeed in that, then a lot can happen.”
Kopecky and Wiebes are the odds-on favourites with just three days to go until Anna Kiesenhofer’s successor is decided, and while that pressure has built more with her crash in the ITT, Kopecky has shown she has what it takes to thrive in the big occasion.
“It’s not easy, but you also learn how to deal with it [pressure]. It doesn’t mean, even when - and I’m not saying I am but - even if you are the best rider in the peloton, it doesn’t mean you win every race,” said Kopecky to Cyclingnews. “Every race has to be ridden, so I’ll just try to do my best, stay calm and focus on what I have to do.”
