Tour de France Femmes: Belgian women’s cycling before Lotte Kopecky
Belgian women’s cycling is on the rise, to a large extent thanks to Lotte Kopecky, one of the biggest stars in the Tour De France Femmes. As the 2025 race begins on Saturday, we remember the pioneering women who paved the way for her.
This year hasn’t been easy for Belgian cyclist Lotte Kopecky. The reigning world champion’s winter preparation was disrupted by a knee injury and in the run-up to her main goal of the season – the Tour De France Femmes – she’s also struggled with back pain.
Because of this, Kopecky is not among the favourites to win the race. It’s also highly unlikely that she'll repeat her impressive performance from 2023, when she finished second.
If she does defy the odds to come out on top this year, she’ll be following in the footsteps of her compatriot Heidi Van De Vijver – although that’s a complicated story.
International star
In 1993, Van De Vijver won the Tour of the European Community (Tour de la CEE), organised by the ASO, which founded the Tour de France for men. In the same year, she also finished second in the Tour Cycliste Féminin, a rival event.
“Whether I won the Tour de France for women? To be honest, I still don’t know,” Van De Vijver said herself in 2021.
What is certain is that Van De Vijver was Belgium’s top female cyclist in the 1990s, and an international star at a time when women’s cycling was still very undervalued. She finished in the top 10 in her Tour de la CEE debut in 1990, when she was just 20. Two years later, she finished on the podium in both the Tour Cycliste and the Tour de la CEE.
"Whether I won the Tour de France for women? To be honest, I still don’t know"
“I realised then that I could really climb,” she said. In 1993, she wore the leader’s yellow jersey almost from start to finish, apart from the prologue. Her tactic? “Controlling the race, countering and shadowing the main competitors.”
Stuntwoman, cyclist, pilot
A century before these performances by Van De Vijver, fellow Belgian Hélène Dutrieu broke the women’s world hour record.
At that time, at the end of the 19th century, women’s cycling was considered “indecent” and a threat to traditional gender roles. But Dutrieu was one of the pioneers who defied these prejudices.
After breaking the world hour record, she became world champion in track cycling. But she retired young, as it was too difficult to earn a living from cycling. Dutrieu first became a stuntwoman, before going into aviation and becoming Belgium’s first ever female pilot.
Yvonne Reynders was the figurehead of Belgian women’s cycling in the middle of the 20th century. Between 1955 and 1967, she became world champion no fewer than seven times: four times on the road and three times on the track.
Her first victory in a world championship on the road was on Belgian soil, in Rotheux-Rimière, Liège province. Reynders had started “training” at the age of 16, transporting heavy bags of coal through the city on a cargo bike for her parents’ coal business in Antwerp.
Her successor was Nicole Van den Broeck. She was Belgian champion five times and enjoyed her biggest triumph in Barcelona in 1973, when she was crowned world champion on the road.
At the time of her greatest success, she was still working as an independent milkwoman and took two weeks off for the first time in her life, so she could travel to Spain for the world championships.
While all these pioneers received little recognition for their exploits, because of the general lack of interest in women’s cycling at the time, the situation has improved significantly in the last 15 years.
An influential figure in the growth of popularity in women’s cycling in Belgium is Grace Verbeke, who in 2010 won the most important classic race in Flanders – the Tour of Flanders.
That same year, she also finished sixth in the world championship in Geelong in Australia. But her career was cut short because of physical problems, which started after a training accident in 2011.
Prolific winner
The predecessor of the current queen of Belgian cycling, Kopecky, is Jolien D’hoore, who has four Belgian road titles to her name and was one of the strongest sprinters in the women’s peloton. She was a prolific winner both on the road and on the track. The highlight of her career was arguably at the 2016 Olympics, when she won the bronze medal in the omnium.
On the track, D’hoore often joined forces with Kopecky to great effect. Together they won the madison at the world championships in Hong Kong in 2017. But on the road they were rivals, as they are in a way again today.
Since retiring as a rider, D’hoore works as a sports director for the Belgian team AG Insurance–Soudal. The team is crucial to the future of Belgian cycling, as it’s developing the talent of riders such as Justine Ghekiere, the current Belgian champion, and of the young Lore De Schepper – one of Belgium’s main hopes for the years to come.
Lotte Kopecky at the Giro d’Italia Women, 7 July 2025 © PHOTO MARCO ALPOZZI / LAPRESSE
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