{"id":252903,"date":"2025-07-10T07:37:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T07:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/252903\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T07:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T07:37:11","slug":"lotte-kopecky-suffers-from-back-pain-anna-van-der-breggen-not-super-as-sd-worx-protime-miss-the-gc-mark-in-giro-ditalia-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/252903\/","title":{"rendered":"Lotte Kopecky suffers from back pain, Anna van der Breggen ‘not super’ as SD Worx-Protime miss the GC mark in Giro d’Italia Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

SD Worx-Protime entered this year’s edition of the Giro d’Italia Women<\/a> with two potential cards to play in the overall classification with World Champion Lotte Kopecky<\/a> and four-time winner Anna van der Breggen<\/a>, but both riders have hemorrhaged valuable time in the GC standings due to unexpected circumstances.<\/p>\n

Stage 4 marked the second of three summit finishes at this year’s event, and Kopecky let the GC favourites go on almost from the start of the finishing climb to Pianezze.<\/p>\n

The world champion, who had already lost time on the stage 2 climb to Aprica, crossed the finish line over 19 minutes behind stage winner Sarah Gigante<\/a> (AG Insurance-Soudal).<\/p>\n

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SD Worx-Protime sport director Danny Stam explained that Kopecky is suffering from lower back pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cLotte has pain in her lower back; that\u2019s why things didn\u2019t go as they should on the climbs. Under these circumstances, there was little point in going all-out on the finishing climb, and Lotte chose to take it easy,\u201d Stam told Het Laatste Nieuws<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kopecky rode to the finish together with Elena Cecchini, and even the team\u2019s sprinter Lorena Wiebes, who won stage 3 into Trento, finished a few minutes ahead of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also came to this Giro to boost morale for the Tour, so it\u2019s definitely not great. It\u2019s not what we hoped for, but panicking now or drawing conclusions before the Tour won\u2019t get us anywhere either. We trust in our process, and Lotte is still in good spirits,\u201d Stam continued.<\/p>\n

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Van der Breggen, who won the Giro d’Italia on four occasions in 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2021, chose to set a steady pace at the front of the group of favourites for much of the final climb.<\/p>\n

However, when Marlen Reusser (Movistar) accelerated just inside the 3km mark, the 35-year-old couldn\u2019t follow. In the end, Van der Breggen finished 1:52 minutes behind Gigante and dropped to sixth overall, 1:53 minutes down on Reusser.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnna isn\u2019t super, but not bad either. It doesn\u2019t go for her as we had hoped either, but the Giro is not over yet,\u201d said Stam.<\/p>\n

The pan-flat stage 5 on Thursday is earmarked for Wiebes, and Van der Breggen still has the last three stages to hunt stage victories and possibly improve her GC placing.<\/p>\n

The final stage, in particular, holds good memories for Van der Breggen as it finishes on the same Imola circuit where she won the 2020 World Championships.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our Giro d’Italia Women coverage. Don’t miss any of the breaking news, reports, and analysis from one of the biggest women’s stage races of the season. <\/strong>Find out more.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SD Worx-Protime entered this year’s edition of the Giro d’Italia Women with two potential cards to play in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-252903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114827798818081973","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}