{"id":650139,"date":"2026-05-05T01:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T01:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/650139\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T01:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T01:16:08","slug":"lotte-kopecky-relegated-fined-and-given-yellow-card-in-botched-la-vuelta-femenina-sprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/650139\/","title":{"rendered":"Lotte Kopecky relegated, fined and given yellow card in botched La Vuelta Femenina sprint"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) came away empty handed for the second straight day in La Vuelta Femenina<\/a>. After finishing a close second on Sunday, Kopecky was relegated to last place in her group of 36 in the sprint on stage 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Coming onto the finishing straight in the slipstream of her teammate Anna van der Breggen, Kopecky looked like a very good bet for the victory on stage 2 to San Cibrao das Vi\u00f1as.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But as she launched her sprint, Kopecky veered left, bumping into eventual stage winner Shari Bossuyt (AG Insurance-Soudal). She then veered right, into the path of eventual stage runner-up Franziska Koch (FDJ United-Suez) and stopped pedalling, crossing the line in 15th place.<\/p>\n

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Kopecky was fined 500CHF for violating rule 2.12.007-5.1, “Deviation from the chosen line that obstructs or endangers another rider or irregular sprint”, according to the race communique. She also received a yellow card and was docked 18 points toward the green jersey classification.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to shift gears. With the SRAM system, if you press both buttons at the same time, you shift to the small chainring,” a frustrated Kopecky explained to Belgian broadcaster Sporza.<\/p>\n

“At the moment I wanted to shift up, I came into contact with Shari, that caused me to shift to the inner [smaller] chainring and drop the chain.”<\/p>\n

Until the last 200 metres, everything had gone to plan for Kopecky.<\/p>\n

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“My team did great work today and dropped me off for the final. That last climb was hard, but I got over it, then I came to Anna, and she did a perfect lead-out. I launched at the perfect moment,” she said.<\/p>\n

Now, Kopecky faces an uphill battle for the points classification, dropping from second to 14th, 38 points behind Bossuyt.<\/p>\n

Kopecky should have another opportunity for a sprint in Tuesday’s stage 3 to A Coru\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our La Vuelta Femenina coverage as the likes of Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and others battle it out. Don’t miss any of the breaking news, reports, and analysis from one of the biggest women’s stage races of the season. Find out more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) came away empty handed for the second straight day in La Vuelta Femenina. After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-650139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}