although previously SD Worx have said they dont consider her a threat,albeit another one of Dannys off script comments to the media, do you think if she were to ride for them, she'd be in a better position to take the wins we know she is capable of ? is it Canyon Sram who are holding her back in effect ?
as shes been at Canyon Sram for a while, they dont feel like a team thats built around her or capable of supporting her if she were in a winning position, wheres their Marlen Reusser or Christine Marjerus they can just bring to the front of a group and drill a pace that causes splits and launches
they kind of seem to be one of those do the best result kind of teams, but not a this is the target kind of team, plus they now have two quick younger riders who are clearly capable of stage winning themselves, so where does that leave Kasia ?
Definitely anybody who doesn't ride for SD Worx who is of sufficient standing would have better chances of winning races if they were at SD Worx, but that's just because they're so dominant. I don't think Canyon-SRAM are necessarily holding her back, more that they have had a bit of trouble with bad luck and injuries when they've made big money signings. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot came over but hardly raced for the team, and of course the big signing of Chloe Dygert a couple of years ago has only been able to bear any fruit this season due to her terrible knee injury at Imola keeping her down for a while, and similarly Mikayla Harvey was not able in her couple of seasons there to replicate her 2020 showings which were high quality and made her look like a future GC podium rider but perhaps with the benefit of hindsight may have been artificially inflated by the way New Zealand was less impacted by the pandemic than others - she is still a rider who has that potential, it's just seeming harder to believe she will succeed in achieving up to that potential after a couple of lean seasons.
They do have a very solid squad of young riders to cover most areas, climbing in particular they have a very strong selection for the future - Neve Bradbury, Ricarda Bauernfeind, Antonia Niedermaier, Shari Bossuyt... it's a very good selection for the future; OK, they're missing out on some of the bonanza potential riders who SD Worx already have their hands on like Niamh Fisher-Black or Blanka Vas, but you can't often compete on a level playing field budget-wise with them, so c'est la vie. Elise Chabbey and Pauliena Rooijakkers give them some strong experienced riders for the mountains as well, so if they can use their weaponry effectively in the climbing races, they will either pick up a lot of escape wins through these secondary riders especially if they are underestimated, or they will provide some useful lieutenants for Kasia to continue her current style hopefully with a bit more success in future.
Rouleuses is the area that the team is lacking slightly in comparison; Szkalniak-Sójka is a strong rouleuse but not at the level of a Reusser type of course, while Paladin and Chabbey are sufficiently all-round. The big wildcard is Dygert and how they choose to deploy her, because she
could play that role, or even the role that Kopecky is currently doing for SD Worx (in terms of as a threat and a card to play, not to say that she will chase down her own teammates in the same way). Van Agt will handle sprints but could she be deployed as a rouleuse? Bossuyt definitely can. It's not a weak team by any stretch of the imagination, it's at least as strong as what Movistar can offer for Lippert going forward with Annemiek retiring, stronger than what DSM can offer for Labous, and while Jumbo's rouleuse corps may be stronger, they lack compared to Canyon in the mountains. The only problem is simply that SD Worx are just that strong and that deep... and other teams need to start calling SD Worx' bluff and make them actually expend those domestiques rather than playing directly into their hands all too often. The number of breakaway wins in this Tour and Kopecky's angry banging on the handlebars at the failure of the chase shows that SD Worx have kind of been happy to rely on other teams carrying them along most of the way for a while, and have grown accustomed to it; they have so many chiefs that the few Indians they have left need to be challenged so that the team have to make decisions around the chiefs. We've seen many a time that the team is actually tactically pretty all over the place, they've just been able to get away with those weaknesses because the team is so strong they can just bludgeon their way to the win with the strength of individual riders. Other teams need to put pressure on the decision makers at SD Worx more and make them decide between their riders, make them commit riders that they don't want to commit to a chase to a chase, make them narrow their options down... maybe even go so far as to make them ask Lotte Kopecky to expend some energy on behalf of somebody else.
), and neither should she. She and the team can be very proud of how they raced.
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