The latest issue of Cycling Weekly magazine, out today, is led by an eight-page interview with world champion Lotte Kopecky.
I had the pleasure of conducting and writing it. Some of you may have already received your copy, but whether you have read it yet or not, I thought it apt to share more from behind the scenes.
Our conversation took place the week after Kopecky won the UAE Tour, and - despite having spent the last few years quizzing everyone from pro riders to company executives - I have never been so nervous for an interview in my life. In the past eight months alone, I have watched the Belgian claim three world titles, two European titles in a 19-minute window on the track, and a milestone first mountaintop victory on Jebel Hafeet, dropping some of the strongest climbers in the peloton.
As her rainbow jersey testifies, Kopecky is the best cyclist in the world. And it is not often, rare in fact, that you get half an hour to chat exclusively with the world champion. My nerves, I felt, were justified.
All my correspondence in the lead-up to the interview was with Gretel, the press officer at SD Worx-Protime. After two weeks of back and forth, she sent me an email one evening to say that Kopecky had made time for a call with me on Saturday morning, at 8am.
I don’t tend to see that hour on a Saturday. So, wanting to be punctual, I set three alarms before 7am, and slept terribly. I woke up hourly throughout the night, like an anxious traveller nervous about missing an early flight. I was then at my desk before the sun was in the sky.
Two minutes before 8am, I received an email. "Lotte Kopecky has joined your Zoom meeting," it said. The nerves rose sharply to a crescendo. I booted up the call, and there she was, dialling in from a training camp in Spain, wearing AirPods and a coral pink t-shirt.
I said hello, but my greeting was met with silence. Her eyes darted around the screen, she fiddled with the buttons, then turned to the text box to type. "Can you hear me?" the world champion wrote. I shook my head. She smiled and, sussing out the problem, took out her AirPods. The audio connected. "Ok good," she said. My nerves disappeared.
Last summer, Kopecky’s stardom ballooned when she won the opening stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and held the yellow jersey for six days. She went on to finish second overall, behind her team-mate Demi Vollering. During the race, though, something else caught my eye: Kopecky released her own clothing line, called ‘LoKo’.
The brand name, it turned out, was a clever bit of world play - a mash-up of her first and last names, and a nod to the Spanish word for crazy. I asked her about it. “People who know me know I’m sometimes a bit loco,” she told me. It’s a side to the world champion, known for her ruthlessness on the bike, that most cycling fans won’t have seen.
The feature I wrote is titled ‘Going Loko’, and explores Kopecky’s free-spirited nature. Yes, she's a serial winner of bike races, but she's also a thrill-seeker, using her day off in Dubai to skydive, and joining a group of merry men on a beer bike in Gent.
We spoke about the importance of having fun, her impact on the next generation, and how handling fame has affected her life. "I used to have more problems with it," she said. "Maybe before Covid, people had some expectations. I was a good rider, but not the top rider, and they wanted me to win but I was not able to yet."
Now, the 28-year-old wins at will, her exploits vaunted across the media. “Every week, you’re in the newspaper, or your head is on the TV,” she said. This week is no different. Kopecky is our cover star.
To read the interview, you can buy a copy of this week’s Cycling Weekly in store for £3.25, or online for £4.50, including delivery. It’s a special issue for International Women’s Day, and one we are very proud of. Within the pages, you'll also find an exploration of the physiological differences between men and women, and the story of one inspiring woman's journey from novice to ultra endurance rider.
