So near yet so far. Lotte Kopecky’s solo pursuit of lone breakaway Sigrid Haugset on stage 3 of the Tour de France Femmes came desperately close to seeing the Belgian star make contact with the race leader, and perhaps battle for the day’s win, but it was not to be.
When Haugset continued on a historic 85-kilometre breakaway, that eventually landed her the stage win and the overall race lead, Kopecky set off alone behind her. At one point, the SD Worx-Protime racer singlehandedly reduced Haugset’s advantage from well over a minute to just 10 seconds. However, despite the Belgian’s tenacious pursuit, that was to be as good as it got.
As Kopecky told Eurosport later, just as she thought she could catch the Uno-X Mobility rider, cramps kicked in with a vengeance. As she put it, “If I pushed harder, my legs went straight.”
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And instead, what had been a steadily shrinking gap went into a remorseless reverse gear, with Kopecky getting more and more distanced.
Finally second behind Haugset at 1:24 after crossing the line, Kopecky spent a long time slumped against the barriers, clearly exhausted as the results of her massive effort kicked in. It was, she said later, one of the longest solo in-race rides of her career.
Her initial decision to try to chase down Haugset was because Kopecky felt she had “really good legs” and that the bunch was slowing down, she explained. If she’d stayed in the peloton, she said, the Norwegian National Champion would have “a free ride”.
“My legs were too good to let that happen so I went on the chase alone,” Kopecky told Eurosport. And after a long time with the gap at 1:20 between the leader and her pursuer, a point when it felt like the chase was becoming fruitless, suddenly she started getting closer and closer.
“On the uphill parts” – where Haugset visibly suffered the most – “I tried to really push and then I saw her in front of me.,” Kopecky said. But just as she thought she had reached her target, it all went horribly wrong.
“The thing is I was not empty. [But[ my legs were starting to cramp and I couldn’t push anymore. If I pushed harder, my legs went straight. So then I had to let her go. I just couldn’t push any more,” she said.
On such a long chase, the intense heat, reaching 37°C or higher at some point on a scorching August afternoon, was particularly tough to handle, she added. Not having the protection which being inside a peloton can afford at least in part only made that worse.
The stage itself was a tough one, being a 156.5-kilometre trek across the Jura mountains and with multiple classified climbs. Then after Haugset attacked, Kopecky found herself suffering but determined to chase through the very difficult racing conditions – only to miss out by a frustratingly narrow margin.
“When you’re alone and riding is such a long effort, you just cannot cool down anymore,” she explained before heading for the team bus.
“I tried to pour as many bottles over me as possible, but in the end, it was too much. She was really strong.”
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