FEMALE RIDER
Zoe Bäckstedt can’t pinpoint why she’s so much better than other riders her age
As her father and 2004 Paris-Roubaix winner Magnus potters around behind her, Zoe Bäckstedt struggles to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes her so much better than other 18-year-olds. She does, after all, have not one but four world titles to her name right now.
“Honestly, I couldn’t tell you,” she explains to CW from her winter home in the Flemish countryside. “I get part of my cycling skills from my parents, obviously my dad winning Roubaix, my mum being national road champion, things like that. It’s useful having a cycling family as my background, but I put a lot of hard work into my riding, training and racing.”
Bäckstedt doesn’t get an off-season like other riders. For her, the racing never really stops.
“If I were just a road rider, I’d probably have a month off and then go to Spain or somewhere sunny for a really long training camp,” she says.
But she’s more than just a road rider. Each year, when the nights begin to draw in, Bäckstedt’s focus shifts to cyclo-cross, her favourite discipline. Her face lights up as she begins to explain the joys of cold mornings spent racing through mud.
“I just love it,” she says. “I embrace the pure grit and grime of the Belgian winter and basically just layer up.
“It’s like two degrees in the middle of a field in Belgium somewhere and you’re like, ‘Why am I here?’ But yeah, I just love it.”
Over the past month, the teenager has been so busy border hopping between races that she’s barely had a chance to reflect on her season. When she does, she’ll realise that 2022 was special. Even by her high standards.
Bäckstedt opened the year by winning her first Junior Cyclo-cross World Championships in Fayetteville, North Carolina, breaking away from the rest of the field on the opening lap. In August, she travelled to Tel Aviv, Israel, where she claimed the junior Madison world title on the track with her partner Grace Lister.
When asked what her favourite race of the season was, though, she barely stops to take a breath. “I’ve got to say road Worlds,” she replies. “The road race and the time trial, doing the double.”
In September, a week after completing a clean sweep at the threestage Watersley Ladies Challenge, Bäckstedt headed to Wollongong, Australia, as the clear favourite for both events. She was, after all, the defending junior road world champion, and had only missed out on the gold in the time trial by 10 seconds the year before.
Homework
As the hype built up around her and expectation grew larger, Bäckstedt took no notice. Instead, she was out doing what she does best. Preparing.
“I’d done a lot of studying, let’s say. I’d
