Lotte Kopecky started her 2024 road season by winning the overall at the UAE Tour, and seven months later she has ended her current run in the rainbow jersey (at least in terms of WorldTour racing) by winning the overall at Tour de Romandie – bookending her rainbow year with WorldTour GC titles that started with the 2023 Simac Ladies Tour.
The Belgian finished second in the opening stage sprint, second on the mountaintop at the end of stage 2, and third behind a breakaway of two in the final stage. The three podium finishes secured her the overall victory, six seconds ahead of teammate Demi Vollering and 46 seconds ahead of Gaia Realini of Lidl-Trek.
“I came here to see how my form was at the moment, and I’m quite happy where I am with the World Championships coming,” Kopecky said after the third stage.
Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) won the opening sprint stage and Riejanne Markus (Visma-Lease a Bike) won the final stage after a day in the breakaway.
How it happened
- The race opened with an active sprint stage. There were a few strong attacks, the final of which included Elizabeth Holden (UAE Team ADQ) and Christine Majerus (SD Worx-Protime). The duo stayed away until 2.5 km to go when the SD Worx-Protime rider went solo.
- Majerus didn’t stay away for long, though, and was brought back by a strong chase led by FDJ-Suez and Lidl-Trek.
- A few attacks on the climb were for nothing and the stage came down to a sprint between Lotte Kopecky and Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), and it was the Italian who took stage honours and the first leader’s jersey of the race. Movistar’s Liane Lippert was able to finish third.
- The second stage finished atop a 9.5 km climb and would shake up the general classification. During this stage, the UCI also implemented a new ear-piece restriction rule.
- Climbers were eager to take on the stage, and potentially the lead of the race, but one climber who would not be able to show herself was Évita Muzic. The FDJ-Suez rider crashed with 25 km to go on the run-in to the climb and was unable to regain contact with the front group.
- On the climb itself, Mavi García (Liv AlUla Jayco) did a majority of the early pacemaking, shredding the bunch behind her. But in the end, it would come down to four riders for the stage win: three from SD Worx-Protime and Gaia Realini of Lidl-Trek.
- SD Worx-Protime was represented by Vollering, Kopecky and Niamh Fisher-Black, but the Kiwi was the first to lose contact with the quartet.
- Realini hit the other two with as many attacks as she could, trying to crack Kopecky, but in the end, she was dropped and Kopecky and Vollering sprinted for the win.
- Vollering took the stage and Kopecky the leader’s jersey, by only two seconds. Realini finished in third, 34 seconds down.
- The final stage, a rolling/punchy course, would be the final battleground for the Tour de Romandie. Niamh Fisher-Black and Riejanne Markus (Visma-Lease a Bike) set out in a long-range breakaway with 80 km to go. Multiple riders attempted to hit out behind the leaders, including FDJ-Suez’s Grace Brown, but the reduced peloton behind kept any further attacks in check.
- The gap to Markus and Fisher-Black dropped more due to attacks behind than any concentrated chase. DSM-Firmenich PostNL was actively trying to send riders up the road, with Canyon-SRAM making sure to follow most attacks.
- With 10 km to go the gap still hovered around one minute, and as the duo out front reached the final 5 km, it seemed the stage win would be decided by Markus and Fisher-Black. Movistar and Liv AlUla Jayco finally started chasing inside the final 3 km, but the gap to the two out front was still over 40 seconds.
- In the final sprint, Markus won against Fisher-Black, with Kopecky taking third from a group of five behind. With third place adding to her runner-up placings in both previous stages, Kopecky also secured her overall win.
- Unfortunately, a crash in the finale took down Vollering as well as Ashleigh Moolman Pasio of AG Insurance-Soudal, among others, but the 3 km rule was in effect so Vollering’s second-place finish was safe.
Stage-by-stage results
Stage 1: 🥇 Elisa Balsamo, 🥈Lotte Kopecky, 🥉 Liane Lippert
Stage 2: 🥇 Demi Vollering, 🥈 Lotte Kopecky, 🥉 Gaia Realini +34
Stage 3: 🥇 Riejanne Markus,🥈 Niamh Fisher-Black, 🥉Lotte Kopecky +21
Final GC Top 10
Loading...
Quotes of the race
The battle between Vollering and Kopecky on stage 2 was reminiscent of Strade Bianche last spring. Neither of them gave up a millimetre in the final sprint, even coming together after the line – Vollering taking the stage, but Kopecky advancing into yellow. They seemed in good spirits after the race, Vollering riding over to give Kopecky a high-five, but when it came to the post-race interview, Vollering’s answers indicated she knew who her biggest rival for the overall was, and she wasn’t just going to hand it over.
[Kopecky] was really strong today, and I wanted to out-sprint her, of course. I actually thought I had dropped her, then I looked towards the line, and suddenly she was next to me. Luckily I won, but she was very strong today.”
When asked about the team’s plan for the third stage, Vollering mentioned that she would leave SD Worx-Protime for the first time. Her team has said it publicly, but Vollering herself hasn’t acknowledged her 2025 plans.
I don’t know. It’s a strange situation because I will leave the team, so I hope my team will be neutral on this. We will see tomorrow. Lotte is ahead of me [on GC], so probably they will go for her.”
There were apparently no hard feelings between Kopecky and Vollering at the finish. Both were complimentary of each other, and Kopecky said the fight had been enjoyable, and that there was no reason not to fight for the win among teammates.
Brief analysis
- Elisa Balsamo’s form is coming around for a strong end to the season. The Italian started 2024 strong but suffered a nasty crash at Vuelta a Burgos that took her out for a large part of the season, and when she returned to the Giro d’Italia, she was forced to abandon stage 5 due to illness. Her stage 1 win is her first victory since winning Brugge-De Panne in the spring, but there are a number of sprinter-friendly races coming up, including the Simac Ladies Tour, so she could well take another win this season.
- Lidl-Trek has their work cut out for them next season. They are losing their top GC rider Elisa Longo Borghini, but they’ve already announced the addition of Riejanne Markus and Niamh Fisher-Black. Both have GC potential and when you factor in Realini, there’s a lot the American team could accomplish if they play their cards right.
- SD Worx-Protime isn’t going to miss Demi Vollering next season, with Kopecky coming into her own as a GC rider and Anna van der Breggen coming out of retirement. The Tour de Romandie champion is only getting better and better in the mountains, and had she raced the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, we may have seen a completely different podium. Even if Van der Breggen doesn’t perform at a top level (which she probably will), Kopecky still looks like she will be Vollering’s biggest competition in 2025.
- Kopecky’s form over the three days also puts her solidly at the top of the riders-to-watch list for the upcoming World Championships. The hilly course in Zurich is similar to the final stage of Romandie, where Kopecky was happy to let her teammate Fisher-Black fight for the stage win in the breakaway. The Belgian woman is clearly keen to keep her rainbow stripes for next season.
Up next
With the end of the Tour de Romandie, the last mountainous stage race of the season is done. From here, it’s the sprinters who will lead the way. The next WorldTour stage race is the Simac Ladies Tour, a six-stage race in the Netherlands. Last year there was a hilly stage or two, but no high mountains. The season will then wrap up in mid-October with the Tour of Chongming Island and Tour of Guangxi.
What did you think of this story?