The Finnish rider has earned five time trial national titles, four road national titles, won Gent-Wevelgem, and claimed additional wins and stages along the way. But now with her second child on the way, Lotta is ready to move on from the peloton and embark on her next adventure.

Read on for our conversation with Lotta about pregnancy, her career, and why she always loved training camps.

Thank you. Everyone is healthy. Everything is good. I’m 21 weeks now. I can already feel all the kicks. It’s going strong at the moment! So that’s good.

This will be my second child and for me, I think it’s a little bit too hard to come back again with two kids. I think it’s my time to retire. Plus, the peloton is getting so strong! I don’t know if I have that much to give to racing any more. Maybe I would but retiring had been in my mind a little bit so I think this is the natural way to exit.

The decision was quite easy. Even before this pregnancy, retiring was in the back of my mind. This year I had a rough spring with illness and I had a heavy crash last summer. Just bad luck. After the off-season, when I started training again, I was still thinking about that crash and it was still mentally affecting me. But when I won Trofeo Marratxi-Felanitx in January, of course I started thinking, ‘Ok, maybe one more year after this.’ Then, I got sick and missed the classics.

I spoke to my [former teammate] Coryn Labecki before I found out I was pregnant again, and she said that if it happens, then it’s meant to be, and I was already thinking that way. That’s how I know it’s time to leave cycling.

It was pretty nice to win in January in Mallorca. It was very cool to win my first race of the season. The team committed, and we got the reward – we won! I think that was special. That’s a nice memory. But of course, winning Gent-Wevelgem in 2017 was pretty cool also.

For sure, I will miss the camps and training – and just being fit. [Lotta laughs] But the camps were always great. For me, they were like a holiday. Somebody cooked for you and you just needed to ride your bike. You could just rest and chill and hang with your teammates and you get a massage. That’s quite nice. Someone does your laundry. That was super nice.

I'm from Finland and we’re not a very common cycling country so I hope I was a good example for all Finnish people that you can also jump from our country to being one of the best riders in the world. I hope I gave that inspiration. Beyond that, all the time I was on this team, I wanted us to always race as a team. I hope I brought that attitude to my teammates. If we want to win, we need to race together.

Finland is our home. It’s definitely home. Our families are here. It’s just easy. And also with Olavi’s school here in Finland, he’s already settled in and loves it so much. The only minus about Finland is the winter. If there's a lot of snow, winter is super nice. I love that. We’re looking forward to cross-country skiing. We have tracks 200 meters from our house. But if there’s no snow, it’s awful. It’s so dark and miserable [laughs]. I haven’t done so many winters here in the past 20 years, so it’s going to be an experience and maybe a challenge. Let’s see how it goes!

Yes! August 23rd. Last time when I got pregnant, I didn’t announce anything about retiring. I wasn’t even thinking about it. Maybe because I already had it in my mind that I would make a comeback. But now, I’ve had quite a long cycling career and had some success and so I thought, let’s just have a thing where I can thank those people who helped me in the past to achieve this pro cycling career. I’ve invited those people from my past and from my present and some friends. We’ll have some coffee and then a little ride, just 20k on my home roads, because near me there’s a road called Lotan Etappi, which means Lotta’s Stage. That’s a 4-kilometer road and we’ll go ride that. Just have a sauna and lunch. That’s it, just a little excuse to hang together. But I may need a bigger jersey by then! It’s already tight. I’ll be 23 or so weeks pregnant by then so my belly will be a bit bigger. My team kit may not fit me anymore!