Lotte Kopecky made a deliberate decision to delay the start of her season to place a firm target on Milan-San Remo and a few of the major Spring Classics before turning her attention to a GC role at the Tour de France later in the year.
The two-time consecutive World Champion will line up as one of the stand-out favourites, even if she has not yet toed the start line this season. She said that Milan-San Remo has been her favourite race on the men's calendar to watch and that she will likes the course design, particularly the Poggio climb and descent and run-in to San Remo.
"It's a race that I like the most on the men's [calendar] especially the final," Kopecky said in an early-season interview with select media.
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"I only know it from TV, but it is a really nice climb. It might not be as explosive as it is in the men's race, for us, it will take a little bit longer. But I think it is a nice final climb, and with the descent afterward and a flat finish, it gives opportunities for a lot of riders, and it is a nice race for our team."
It has been 20 years since the women's field has been offered the opportunity to compete in Milan-San Remo, which was formerly called La Primavera Rosa held from 1999 to 2005.
Organised by RCS Sport, the comeback of the women's version of Milan-San Remo now becomes the first of four Monuments offered to the women's peloton, alongside the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix Femmes and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, of which Kopecky has won two of twice at Flanders in 2022 and 2023, and Roubaix in 2024.
"I'm happy that the race is on the calendar," Koepcky said.
The women's field will race along a 156km route from Genoa to San Remo along the scenic coastline before tackling the iconic Cipressa and Poggio climbs, which are likely to decide how the final plays out.
Kopecky's strengths in one-day races and on climbs mean that she will be eyeing the challenging Poggio as a potential place to make her move. The Belgian will be backed by a powerful SD Worx-Protime team that includes another potential winner in Lorena Wiebes.
Kopecky said that a delayed start has allowed her to recover from a long season last year, which ended with another elite road race world title in September and an overall victory at the Simac Ladies Tour.
"There will be some changes. I've taken it a lot easier in my build-up to the season. The season will look different than last year. We will try to approach it differently than before," noting that she spent some time at an altitude training camp before her racing season begins.
"The plan to start at Milan-San Remo, so that I could have an easier build-up. The load at Simac was much more than expected [end of 2024]. So, I need to be a bit easier [start to this season] because of some discomfort in my knee, so we stuck to this plan to start at Milan-San Remo."
No matter how the race ends on Saturday in San Remo, Kopecky will then turn her attention to some of the other major Classics, but her biggest goal this year will be to lead the SD Worx-Protime to a yellow-jersey victory at the Tour de France.
Kopecky has grown as one of the top contenders in the Grand Tours in recent years. She finished second overall at the 2023 Tour de France Femmes and second overall at the Giro d'Italia last year, proving that she could climb with the best on the iconic slopes of the Col du Tourmalet and Blockhaus, respectively.
She acknowledged that changes needed to be made to her training to accommodate her goals for the French Grand Tour, this year. Asked if her aim to improve on climbs meant a potential loss to her explosiveness in the sprint, or one-day races such as Milan-San Remo or Tour of Flanders, Kopecky did not have a definitive answer.
"It depends on how we train. I think I have been able to manage it well; to keep those components balanced, between being explosive and climbing well," she said.
"Maybe I will try to climb better, and maybe a little less explosive but I will still be one of the more explosive riders in the bunch so, I don't see any problem in this."
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