Lotte Kopecky defends her world championship title

In 2023, she did it by breaking away from the other riders. This year, the wet and cold streets of Zurich set the scene for a woman-to-woman sprint among a group of six in which our compatriot demolished the competition.  

Fellow Belgian Justine Ghekiere was not part of the sprint but ended up in an impressive seventh place, making it two Belgian ladies in the top 10, as should be expected by now. 

Lotte and Justine were not the only impressive Belgian at the cycling world championships. Just look at Remco Evenepoel’s historic world title in the time trial category. You’d almost forget that the next day, Jasper Schoofs and Matisse Van Kerckhove took silver and bronze in the junior time trial. In the Under-23 road race category, Alec Segaert brings home a bronze medal, and promising young talent Jarno Widar was just four places behind him.  

Plenty of Belgians to be proud of at this world championship, in other words.  

A retrospective of these world championships, finally, would not be complete without mentioning manager Sven Vanthourenhout, whose last dance with the Belgian national squad of cyclists was on Sunday. If Evenepoel had ended on the podium instead of in the still impressive fifth place, it would have been his hundredth medal while managing this country’s finest.