{"id":27652,"date":"2025-07-27T10:36:44","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T10:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/27652\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T10:36:44","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T10:36:44","slug":"lotte-certainly-wasnt-good-enough-kopecky-struggles-during-tour-de-france-femmes-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/27652\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLotte certainly wasn&#8217;t good enough\u201d \u2013 Kopecky struggles during Tour de France Femmes opening"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/lotte-kopecky\" title=\"Lotte Kopecky\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lotte Kopecky<\/a>\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/tour-de-france-femmes\" title=\"Tour de France Femmes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tour de France Femmes<\/a> got off to a troubling<br \/>\nstart, as the world champion finished 43rd on Stage 1, more than a minute<br \/>\nbehind stage winner Marianne Vos. On a finish that looked ideal for Kopecky,<br \/>\nthe Belgian was unable to contend and missed the chance to take the yellow<br \/>\njersey. The C\u00f4te de Cadoudal should have been her launchpad, 1.7 kilometers at<br \/>\n6.2%, but she was never in the mix. It was a quiet end to a day that had<br \/>\nstarted with high expectations.<\/p>\n<p>Kopecky did not speak to the press after the stage, clearly<br \/>\ndisheartened. Team SD Worx \u2013 Protime director Danny Stam spoke instead, trying<br \/>\nto make sense of the missed opportunity. \u201cDespite all the injuries in recent<br \/>\nweeks, Lotte indicated she wanted to go for the win. So this is a bit of a<br \/>\nsetback,\u201d Stam told VTM.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI haven&#8217;t spoken to her yet, but Lotte certainly wasn&#8217;t<br \/>\ngood enough. The team completely sacrificed themselves for her, and if she&#8217;s<br \/>\nnot there in the end, you can make all sorts of excuses, but the strongest team<br \/>\nwins.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Stam noted that normally Kopecky signals when she\u2019s not<br \/>\nfeeling up to leading, allowing the team to pivot to another strategy. \u201cWe<br \/>\nstill have to analyze it all. Normally, Lotte indicates at such times that<br \/>\nshe&#8217;s not good enough, so we can draw a different card. She didn&#8217;t do that this<br \/>\ntime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kopecky, 29, had approached this year\u2019s race cautiously.<br \/>\nAfter withdrawing from the Giro d\u2019Italia due to lingering back pain, she<br \/>\nadmitted she wasn\u2019t sure how she\u2019d feel once the racing began. \u201cAt the moment,<br \/>\nit\u2019s pretty good, but training and racing are two different things. I didn\u2019t<br \/>\nhave the most easy season, let\u2019s say.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had a really hard winter with the injury. Maybe [the back<br \/>\npain] is coming from the knee, having a little bit of a different position. I<br \/>\ncannot say how it started. I just hope it disappears like it started,\u201d she told<br \/>\nCycling Weekly before the Grand D\u00e9part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lotte Kopecky\u2019s Tour de France Femmes got off to a troubling start, as the world champion finished 43rd&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-27652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}