Lotte Kopecky, 25, became world champion in the points race on Sunday on the last day of the World Track Cycling Championships at the Roubaix velodrome. Robbe Ghys and Kenny De Ketele took bronze in the American.
The Antwerpoise won with 76 points to beat the Briton in the final round. Katie Archibald (72 points), silver medalist, and the Dutch Kirsten Wild (60 points), in bronze.
Wild, 39, said goodbye to high competition by collecting the bronze medal at the age of 39. The Dutch, nine times world champion (3 scratch and 3 American, 2 omnium, 1 points race), received a tribute from the president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), David Lappartient, at the end of the race.
Fourth in the road race at the Tokyo Olympic Games this summer, Lotte Kopecky, who races for the Liv team, will wear the colors of SD Worx next year.
It is the first gold medal for Belgium at the world championships in this discipline. It is also the third medal for Lotte Kopecky during this world edition on the French track after the silver won in the elimination race and in the omnium.
This is the second world title on the track for Lotte Kopecky after the title won in the American race with Jolien D’hoore in 2017.
The beautiful black-yellow-red harvest continued into the afternoon. The duo Ghys-De Ketele placed third in the American (a points race for teams of two). King Kenny bids farewell to the worlds with a final medal.
The Belgian pair had to bow to the Danish masters of the discipline. Already titled in Tokyo, Lasse Norman Hansen and Michael Morkov have confirmed their superiority. The Italians Consonni and Scartezzini finished 2nd in this 200-lap race, ie 50 kilometers interspersed with 20 sprints.
Morkov (36), who is considered one of the very best “launchers“in the road sprints, got her third gold medal in the American, twelve years after the first.
Hansen (29), revealed by his Olympic title in the omnium at the London Olympics, now has nine medals in the Worlds (three gold). Denmark, one of the strong nations on the track, had not yet pocketed a medal since the start of the 2021 Worlds.
In total, Belgium closes these worlds with 6 medals. To the three podiums of Kopecky, it is therefore necessary to add the “plate” of Ghys and De Ketele and the second places of Kenny De Ketele (points race) and Ture Dens (scratch) at the start of the week.
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