Lotte Kopecky returned to action in imperious style on Saturday, dominating the Omnium at the Belgian track championships in Ghent.
In her first competitive outing since fracturing a vertebra on the road at the Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l’Ardeche in September, the SD Worx-Protime rider won all four events, beating second-placed Katrijn De Clercq by more than 100 points.
The Belgian superstar has had a long and distinguished career on the track, with multiple rainbow jerseys, including the first-ever women’s Madison world title, with Jolien D’hoore in 2017. However, Kopecky, who will compete at the Ghent Six Day track meet at the t’Kuipke Velodrome in Ghent city centre this week, expressed some doubts after her injury.
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“The recovery is going well, but the injury still poses a question mark. Definitely,” Sporza reported Kopecky as saying.
"I had a fractured vertebral protrusion, and the surrounding muscles also took a significant hit. For now, things are going well, but I hope it won't affect me later when the workload increases and I compete more."
In the championships, which took place at the Eddy Merckx Flemish Cycling Centre on the city’s outskirts, Kopecky started the day lapping the field in both the Scratch and Tempo races, before winning the Elimination and lapping the peloton four times in the Points race.
"It went pretty smoothly today, but that doesn't change the fact that I had some question marks at the start. I hadn't competed since September, especially not on the track, so of course, I had some questions, but today went better than I expected.”
The 2025 road season was a tough one for the 30-year-old former double road world champion. Having been a prolific winner in previous seasons, a back injury restricted her winter training, and she was unable to replicate her previous form.
Though she won a third Tour of Flanders title, she did not live up to her own expectations in the mid-season stage races, back issues forcing her out of the Giro d’Italia and reducing her to a domestique role at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
After some time off, she returned to competition in August, winning at a low-profile Czech track meet before heading to the Ardeche. There, she won the opening stage, only her second road race win of the year, before crashing out on stage three.
Though they finished the season with the second-highest points tally in the team's ranking, SD Worx-Protime, like Kopecky herself, will hope her injuries are behind her and she will return to the form which brought her 16 victories in 2024 alone.
Kopecky is certainly hopeful, “It’s still a long way off, but I’m already looking forward to it.”
