Lotte Kopecky

Kopecky grew up in Rumst and followed her older brother into cyclo-cross before Belgium's Topsport school steered her towards the track and the road. She won European junior titles on the boards in 2013 and turned professional with Lotto Soudal Ladies at the end of 2015. Her first five road seasons produced Belgian national championships on the road and against the clock, and little else at the top level.

The madison world title with Jolien D'Hoore in 2017 was her first rainbow jersey, and more followed in the points race and the elimination race. Tokyo brought fourth place in the Olympic road race and then a madison in which both she and D'Hoore crashed. She has kept the track on her programme long after most road riders dropped it, including the six-day in Gent.

A year at Liv Racing preceded the move to SD Worx in 2022, and the classics turned over at once. She won Strade Bianche in March, the Tour of Flanders in April and finished second at Paris-Roubaix. At the world championships in Wollongong that September she was beaten by one second by Annemiek van Vleuten, who attacked inside the final kilometre while riding with a broken elbow.

Glasgow staged the road and track championships in the same fortnight in 2023, and Kopecky won the elimination race, the points race and then the road race. She had taken another Tour of Flanders that spring and finished second overall at the Tour de France Femmes, six days in yellow, behind her SD Worx teammate Demi Vollering. Vollering left the team at the end of 2024, having described the communication between them as one-sided.

In 2024 she won Strade Bianche and Paris-Roubaix, defended the world title in Zurich, took Olympic bronze in Paris and beat Vollering to the overall at the Tour de Romandie Féminin. Her wins come from small groups and long attritional finishes rather than bunch sprints, and SD Worx have also used her to lead out Lorena Wiebes.

The Tour of Flanders in April 2025 was the high point of a season interrupted by back pain, an abandoned Giro d'Italia and a fractured vertebra in a crash at the Tour de l'Ardèche in September. She missed the road world championships and then the track worlds, and returned in November at the Gent six-day to win the elimination and points races.