Lotte Kopecky has completed all of it so this season. She gained the Tour of Flanders for the second yr in a row and held the Tour de France maillot jaune for six phases earlier than coming second total to teammate Demi Vollering.
Along with her excellent efficiency on the ‘hellingen’ of Flanders and the Pyrenees, she’s proven a versatility matched solely by compatriot Wout van Aert. As Van Aert did final week, Kopecky heads into Sunday’s street race on the UCI Highway World Championships with confidence in her standing as favorite.
Kopecky has arguably already bettered Van Aert’s efficiency by profitable two world titles throughout this week’s Observe World Championships within the days earlier than her street race, exhibiting her a number of abilities within the Tremendous World Championships.
Kopecky can go into Sunday’s girls’s street race with the boldness of getting gained three medals in a contest schedule organized to simulate subsequent yr’s Paris Olympic Video games schedule.
“Bodily every part goes very well, going into the street race with two world titles and a bronze medal,” Kopecky informed Cyclingnews after amassing her Omnium bronze on the Chris Hoy Velodrome in Glasgow on Wednesday night.
“That is an excellent feeling to enter the street race. I do know I am the favorite. However I additionally began this championship on the observe – I used to be really fairly relaxed – and I additionally was a favorite right here. So within the subsequent few days, I’ll attempt to keep calm and never let individuals make me nervous.”
Kopecky has the benefit of getting seen how the lads’s street race performed out final weekend, when Mathieu van der Poel gained alone, regardless of a late crash, beating Van Aert, Tadej Pogačar and Mads Pedersen.
The technical, punchy street race route in central Glasgow appears as if it was made for a rider who can win a world title in a factors race. The repeated high-watt efforts do not appear to faze Kopecky, and he or she is aware of it’s a prime alternative to develop into world champion.
“I believe will probably be very, very powerful. However yeah, I believe it is one thing that fits me,” she mentioned.
Kopecky, an completed multi-discipline rider who will goal each observe and street at subsequent yr’s Olympic Video games in Paris, praised the mixed Worlds as a option to restrict the bodily and psychological calls for of separate championships.
“I prefer it really. Now it is only one peak and I can mix each – in any other case it is once more stretching the season to the second half of October or the top of October and that makes it mentally perhaps more durable than this now.”
