There’s a weightlessness about Lotte Kopecky as she plants herself into a wicker chair in the garden of her team hotel. Behind her, in the bay beside the Breton town of Vannes, boat masts sway gently in the wind. There’s little noise, save for the sound of water lapping against the hulls, and the faint joy of families playing on the small beach next door.
It’s a serene atmosphere, and with just two sleeps until the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, where Kopecky was expected to mount a GC bid, the world champion is calm, too. The pressure, she says, is off. The idea of winning the yellow jersey has been relinquished, at least for this year. And she is at peace with it.
“At this moment, I’m just trying to get the GC out of my head,” she tells Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. “The team is saying GC is, if we are really honest, quite a hard task. We just need to dare to say we let it go. We are here with a really strong team who can win a lot of stages, so I think it’s only fair to say that you just need to change cards and not put all the eggs in one basket.”
When Kopecky last rode the Tour, in 2023, she wore yellow for six days and finished second to her then SD Worx team-mate Demi Vollering. The following year, the Belgian placed runner-up at the Giro d’Italia Women, a result, she says, that was “confirmation” of her stage-racing credentials. “There were some thoughts and some possibilities.”
Already a bona fide Classics rider, this year’s Tour was set to be Kopecky’s breakthrough as a GC contender. But then the injuries took over. A persistent knee issue over the winter derailed the world champion's early-season training and, just two weeks ago, she abandoned the Giro with lower back pain.
Has she fully recovered for the Tour? “I hope so,” she laughs. “At the moment, it’s pretty good, but training and racing are two different things.
“I didn’t have the most easy season, let’s say. I had a really hard winter with the injury. Maybe [the back pain] is coming from the knee, having a little bit of a different position. I cannot say how it started. I just hope it disappears like it started.”
The doubt over her condition, and the hiccups in her preparation, mean Kopecky has now ruled out a targeted GC bid.
“You need to be fair with yourself and with your teammates,” she says. “I don’t want them to sacrifice or to ride everyday full gas for me, and I say after six days, ‘Sorry, but my back is hurting and I cannot do this.’ I also don’t want to disappoint them. It takes off a lot of pressure for me. I think, for this year, it’s the best thing to do.
“It is what it is now at the moment and I cannot change anything about it, so we’ll just try to make the best of it.”
What that involves is stage hunting, and as early as day one. The opening two stages in Brittany both finish on punchy, uphill drags – "they're perfect for me," Kopecky says. The focus will then turn to SD Worx-Protime's sprinter, Lorena Wiebes, who is primed for the flatter days three and four.
“We’re going to see day by day, but at this moment, I would be really happy to win a stage,” says Kopecky. “If I can, let’s say, win the first stage or the second one – we have to see – once the climbs are going up, for sure I’m really going to try to hang on and see where I can get. But that’s only on the fifth day. We have to wait. Let’s see.”
For now, Kopecky is relaxed and ready. Over her left shoulder, as Anna van der Breggen is about begin a television interview, the world champion dashes across and slaps her hands together in front of her team-mate's face.
The overall victory might be out of reach, but the playfulness is a sign it's time to have fun.
