Pfeiffer Georgi wins at British Championships as Lotte Kopecky claims second gold in Belgium

Pfeiffer Georgi of Team DSM and Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) won the British and Belgian Road Championships, respectively, on Sunday.

Georgi beat Claire Steels (Israel-Premier Tech Roland) by five seconds at Saltburn-by-the-Sea, with Steels taking silver.

Anna Henderson (Jumbo-Visma) beat Elinor Barker (Uno-X Pro Cycling) for third spot.

Georgi had already won the title in 2021 and came second last year, and she came to the race on Sunday as one of the favourites.

“It was a really hard course today, constantly up and down. It was really attritional,” Georgi said after the race. “I wanted to keep it all together on the last lap and take those corners first on the descent to the climb, then go full gas. I believed in it but I’m still in shock; it’s really nice to win the title again.”

Georgi made her break for victory on the penultimate climb at the start of the final lap, with Alex Morrice (Canyon-SRAM) unable to stay in touch, and Steels, Henderson and Barker all made their best attempts to keep up.

With the last climb of Saltburn Bank, she pushed harder and earned the win.

She added: “A group of about seven of us were away for the last few laps. I wasn’t so confident on the climbs originally so I tried with one lap to go on the climb, and I felt strong there which gave me the confidence.”

Kopecky claimed her second win of the Belgian national championships when she added Sunday’s road race to Thursday’s time trial.

Kopecky was the favourite going into the event, a winner in the format in both 2020 and 2021.

She now has three championships, with second place going to Marthe Goossens (AG Insurance-Soudal-QuickStep) and Kelly Druyts (Duolar-Chevelmaire) taking third.

After failing to take the win in 2022, Kopecky said this year’s event “went much better than I expected.”

“Each time a kilometre ticked by, I felt pleased. I couldn’t react to everything, so I had to choose my battles. Sometimes I thought ‘S***, now I’m going to have to do it myself again.’ It was a bit of a gamble.”

“You also lose part of your strength for the sprint through those kinds of efforts, but I felt like I had control over the race.”

She added: “I no longer had any doubts. Now I can go to the Tour de France with this jersey. I’m really looking forward to it.”

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