After racking up another win during her 2024 Spring Classics campaign at Paris-Roubaix Femmes, world champion Lotte Kopecky can rightly claim her place as the best cyclist on the planet.
This spring alone, the Belgian has hoisted the cobblestone trophy aloft for the first time, in addition to winning the UAE Tour plus Strade Bianche, Nokere Koerse, and appearing on the podium at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the Trofeo Binda.
As one of four SD Worx-Protime riders standing tall atop the current UCI rankings, she trails only teammate Demi Vollering, though Kopecky is enjoying a season unrivalled throughout the peloton to this point.
But speaking in the Vélodrome Jean-Stablinski after her victory at the neighbouring Vélodrome André-Petrieux, Kopecky remained humble when asked if she now laid claim to the title of 'best rider in the world'.
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"That's something you will not hear me say," she said. "I think there are a lot of really good cyclists, and I can say that I am probably one of them, yes."
Kopecky came out on top from a six-woman group at the end of the punishing 149km race, speeding past Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), Pfeiffer Georgi (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) and Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease A Bike) to score her team's first win at the race.
Over the previous 70km, ever since the cobbled sector 15 at Tilloy à Sars-et-Rosières, Kopecky had set her stall out numerous times, setting a hard pace at the front of the race and going on the attack on several occasions.
None of those moves would result in a long-range solo effort such as those of Lizzie Deignan and Elisa Longo Borghini at the first two editions of this race, but eventually, with a move at Camphin-en-Pévèle 20km from the finish, she provoked a split that would go on to contest the finish.
Afterwards, Kopecky said that the race had gone to plan for her and her team, as far as one can make plans for a race like Paris-Roubaix.
"It was exactly how we planned," Kopecky said. "We wanted to stay out of trouble in the first 60km and be in front the first three sectors, then after that, we knew there would be crosswinds, so me and Lorena Wiebes were always there, and that was already a good thing.
"Then, before the sector where I attacked for the first time, Elena Cecchini was still there to position me and from that moment on, I knew I wanted to go there and see what happened.
"Going with Marianne Vos wasn't ideal and when I was with her, I could always play the card of Lorena so today I really wanted to win myself, but I was also very motivated that if we had to do the sprint with Lorena I was also 110% committed to that."
In the end, despite coming to the line with a host of other top sprinters, it was Kopecky who once again raised her arms in celebration, the 39th win of her career also one of the biggest – though still, a close second to her Worlds win, she said.
"Before coming on the track, it was already a big fight to get position, but of course, I knew that Marianne and Elisa would fight against each other," Kopecky said of the final run into Roubaix and the hallowed ground of that historic velodrome.
"The other side of the track was headwind, so I knew they'd start early. I had to stay calm, see what I had to do, and start sprinting in the right moment. It was a pretty long sprint, but it was to my advantage, I think.
"I got this confidence from the team," she said of her belief in her sprint finish. "Going against Vos and Balsamo is not ideal. We also had Lorena behind, so we were really gambling on her to come back. But once you come on this velodrome you just need to be confident and believe in yourself that you're capable of winning it."
Kopecky's win, ticking off one of very few major races that SD Worx had yet to win, didn't come without some difficulty, though. There were, thankfully, no punctures or crashes on the road to Roubaix, but she was forced to act as a mechanic on the fly, breaking out the Allen key to fix a loose handlebar after a rough ride over the brutal cobbled sectors.
"I didn't want to change the bike because I was already riding this bike for a few months to get used to it," she said. "I hit a hole, and then the handlebar wasn't tight enough, but, in the end, I am handy enough to fix it myself.
"I'm happy that I could get the key and do it myself. I never really had any bike troubles or anything, so I'm not angry at the mechanic at all," she added jokingly. "It was fixed, and it was not a problem. The rest of the bike was really good."
