Lotte Kopecky to miss Track World Championships with back injury after Tour de l’Ardèche crash

Lotte Kopecky (Team SD Worx-ProTime) has today confirmed that she will not attend the track world championships in Chile in October, following vertebral fractures she sustained in a crash at the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardèche.

In a post on Instagram, Kopecky said “It is the most wise decision to definitively end my season. So no more Track Worlds for me.”

The crash occurred on stage 3 of the race, with her team confirming the crash was worse than originally feared, stating that it had resulted in a vertebral fracture.

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Kopecky had been plagued by persistent lower back pain throughout the season, forcing her to alter her targets and rule herself out of road world championships where she would have been defending the title she had won for the two previous seasons. She had already expressed doubts over whether she would compete in the track world championships, but though initial assessments after the crash showed no broken bones for Kopecky, further examinations revealed the vertebral fractures that would almost certainly end her 2025 season.

Today’s Instagram update confirms this. Kopecky states: “Last year, I injured my knee. Back then I just wanted to train ASAP. Which led to setback after setback and in the end running even more behind. So let’s approach this one right. I’ll give myself the time to let my body and the fracture heal properly.” She goes on to say “Luckily I am able to walk, I can even clean my house a bit,” before praising the “best possible support” that will enable her to return with “patience, experience and lots of love”.

Kopecky has two victories to show for her curtailed 2025 season – her third consecutive Tour of Flanders, in April, and a remarkable seventh consecutive individual time trial title at the Belgian national road championships in June.

Kopecky had expressed frustration with her progress this season, a tough year in which she experienced doubts over whether she was “good enough” to continue to achieve at the high level that the cycling fans and media had come to expect from her. She was already struggling with a knee injury sustained at the SIMAC Ladies Tour in October 2024, before lower back pain added insult to injury, forcing her to abandon the Giro d’Italia Women in July.

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This latest in a series of setbacks will be a blow to the reigning world champion, who will not defend her title in Kigali next weekend. Instead, recovery will take precedence as she prepares to return to form heading into the 2026 season.