Kopecky drives to top ten on dusty gravel of Dwars door Het Hageland

The June sun beat down on the roads of eastern Belgium and an exciting edition of Dwars door Het Hageland exploded off the cobbles and out of the gravel sectors with 20-year-old Matyas Kopecky showing his class with another top ten for Team Novo Nordisk.

Sports Director Gennady Mikhaylov:

“Great job by Matyas today, this is really his kind of race and we knew If he was feeling good that with this parcours he had a good chance of a result and he produced a fantastic performance.”

“We’ve got another tough race coming up tomorrow at Elfstedenronde and we need to recover well tonight. Declan went down pretty hard on one of the gravel sectors, so we need to check him out at the hotel and fingers crossed he’s ok.”

Matyas Kopecky:

“I wasn’t sure about how I’d go today due to training well for only two weeks after being sick and I was thinking this weekend was going to be like a warm up and an attempt to get racing rhythm back ahead of next weeks Tour of Belgium. I was feeling sluggish out of the corners and I can normally come out of there full gas, so I was like ok maybe not so good today.”

“But I got better and better as the race wore on and started to fly out of the corners as usual and with my cyclocross background I’m really comfortable on the gravel. I love it and I can glide through those sections. When the bike starts to slide I get a buzz and it makes me push harder.”

“As the group started to get smaller I was thinking I need to ride smart and keep position, because I had to dig deep on the steep climb out of the last gravel sector and I knew If I held it down there I trust my finish so I thought top ten was possible.”