It is an impressive sight when Lotte Kopecky (27) turns up the Nokeredorpstraat paved with fist-sized stones on her own on Wednesday 15 March. Not only because she rode the attack all day in Nokere Koerse, managed to release her fellow escapees six kilometers from the finish and now crosses the finish line solo with almost half a minute ahead.
It is also special because many in her position had not started the game at all. Kopecky heard a few days earlier that her brother Seppe died at the age of 29. That is why in the final phase of the match there is no question of joy or cheering for the Belgian. With her head bowed, deep between her shoulders, she rolls alone across the finish line.
For those who know her, it was no surprise that Kopecky started that day anyway. “I think she would rather ride a race to get her mind off things than sit at home worrying all day,” says Christel Herremans, who trained her as a teenager. “She told me that the race was on her schedule, and I think she wanted to stick to that given what is to come,” says Jolien D’Hoore, with whom Kopecky raced for years on the road and became world champion on the track at the torque part. And her team leader Anna van der Breggen at SD Worx had the idea that Kopecky just wanted to cycle. “It is something in which she can lose her egg and where she feels good. And of course it is going very well at the moment.”
Lotte Kopecky has become one of the new faces of women’s cycling. Last year she won the Tour of Flanders, Strade Bianche and was second at the World Cup. This season she is again in top form, as evidenced by her results: she won the Omloop and Nokere Koerse and was second in Strade Bianche. It makes Kopecky one of the favorites for a victory in the Tour of Flanders this Sunday, again.
Cycling Club Always Front
The fact that she won the biggest race in cycling-crazy Belgium last year, wearing the Belgian champion jersey, is a dream come true for Kopecky. When her brother Seppe starts cycling, she also wants to and she decides to stop playing football at the age of eleven and becomes a member of the Royal Cycling Club Increasingly Front in Kontich, under the smoke of Antwerp and close to her native village Rumst.
The clubhouse of the cycling club is located right next to the highway that connects Antwerp to Brussels, and resembles a concrete dressing room for the local FC, whose fields are on the same site. Chairman Gregorius Van Moer still remembers the first time Kopecky got on his bike here, in 2006. It was not an immediate success. “She was a timid young girl and had to learn to steer a little. But she was very driven to learn that.”
Kopecky picks up the steering quickly. At the age of fourteen she became Belgian champion on the road, on the track and on the time trial. Boys and girls still race against each other, says Van Moer. “That helped her a lot. In her eyes, she was never the winner with the girls either. If she had finished behind a boy, she would not have won.”
When Kopecky is sixteen, she signs a professional contract with Topsport Vlaanderen. According to her former trainer Herremans, she was completely focused on cycling, which set her apart from her teammates. “Lotte was the only one who came in and said: ‘This is my program’. She knew exactly what she wanted.”
During that time Kopecky also gets to know Jolien D’Hoore, who is a few years his senior. They both stand out above the other Belgian riders and regularly meet each other at the national championships. “She had a very big motorcycle at the time. Only later would she become so fast and could climb hills.”
With her next team, Lotto Soudal, Kopecky grows into a sprint star. Puck Moonen was cycling with the team at the time. Kopecky was “by far” the best and the spearhead of the team, says the Dutch rider. “The difference was so great that we often couldn’t really help her. But she had so much racing instinct that she didn’t need our help either.”
Kopecky appears to be able to digest short climbs particularly well. When Anna van der Breggen, who is still active in the peloton, is at the front in the Strade Bianche final in 2021, Kopecky suddenly passes her on a gravel strip. “At that stage of the game you usually know everyone who is still there. But I thought: who is this?” Kopecky punctures and finishes seventeenth. A year later, in the service of her current team SD Worx, she wins the Italian neoclassic.
Open mouth
Kopecky can now compete for the win in all major one-day races and is the leader of one of the best teams in the world. She is a beloved rider at SD Worx, says Dutch Lorena Wiebes. “She’s a bit in the background, but when you get to know her better, she’s very funny.”
Anyone who manages to gain Kopecky’s trust can count on her, says Herremans. It’s a quality she has retained from the past. “She has often had to start the sprint for someone else with us. As a result, she can now have a lot of respect for the riders who ride for her.”
Still, Kopecky would be a bit more open now and then, says Van den Breggen, now her team leader. This year things go wrong in Strade Bianche: Kopecky and her teammate Demi Vollering ride to the finish together and sprint for the victory. Afterwards, the surprise radiates from their faces, they wait separately for the result. Van der Breggen: „Lotte could have just said there: we are going to sprint for it. But she didn’t, so Demi counted on her to win. She was like: ‘You’ve already won this race and I haven’t.’” Eventually Vollering appears to have won and the riders are then laughing together on the podium.
Kopecky is one of the few foreign riders who can beat the contingent of Dutch top riders. A good thing, says everyone you speak to. “Of course I cheer for the Dutch, but Belgium is a real cycling country, and the more countries are good, the better it is for cycling,” says Van der Breggen. The Belgian D’Hoore, currently sports director of the Belgian AG Insurance Soudal-Quick-Step, sees that the sport is becoming more attractive. “The top has become wider and I hope that many young girls in Belgium look at Lotte and think: I want that too.”
At Always Front there is a ‘Lotte effect’, says chairman Van Moer. “We have several girls who came to us after they asked Lotte where they could go cycling. In the back of their mind, they all want to become the new Lotte.”
And how good can Kopecky become himself? With her development from time trialist to sprinter to classics specialist, the next step could be more serious climbing. Is she a future Tour winner? “If she wanted to, maybe she could,” says Van der Breggen. “But it’s not a quality that she has right away.”
D’Hoore does not see Kopecky transform into a round winner. “She’s not like that. Her heart is with the classics. If you can win as a Belgian in a race like the Tour of Flanders, then that is indescribable. I think she prefers that.”