'I thought in my head, this is not going to go well' – Zoe Bäckstedt conquers tough TT climbs to take first rainbow jersey since junior double

Pre-race favourite Zoe Bäckstedt (Great Britain) put in a storming ride to claim the under-23 time trial title at the Road World Championships, bettering the rest of the field by nearly two minutes to claim her first rainbow jersey since 2022.

Winner of two road race world titles and one time trial title as a junior, plus multiple rainbow jerseys in cyclo-cross and track, Bäckstedt is no stranger to a world title, but she had to wait three years to turn her junior road titles into an under-23 one after missing the last two World Championships.

The first standalone under-23 women's time trial was always going to be a chance to end that wait, and something she targeted specifically, sleeping in an altitude tent and "riding with a lot of clothes on indoors" to adapt to the Kigali heat.

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"It feels amazing to have them back, I've missed them the last two years," she said of donning rainbows again – though she'll only get to wear them in competition if she competes in an under-23 time trial in the next year, of which there are few.

With her last memory of Worlds being an iconic junior double in Wollongong in 2022, Bäckstedt had good feelings as she chased another rainbow.

"I came into it as my last race being Australia Worlds, which was quite special for me, so that gave me some motivation for sure, but it's my first time racing this in the under-23 category, so I never knew what to expect. You don't know what to expect on a course like this with the climbing and the altitude. It could either go great or it could go really bad, and I'm just happy it went well today."

Go well it did, but Bäckstedt didn't know until the finish exactly how well, and despite winning by an impressively large margin, she was very aware of the fact she was suffering over the two tough climbs on the course.

"I really just went out there and went as hard as I could. Like I say on the cobbles you can feel awful but you can be going super good," she said.

"I think that's what happened for me on the climb today, that maybe I didn't feel amazing, and I was thinking in my head, 'Ah, this is not going to go well, ' but in the end I came out and I was in a good position. And then I just had to really punch over that last 500 metres and send it to the finish."

She also caught two riders on her way to the finish line, passing both Julia Kopecký (Czechia) and her three-minute rider Marie Schreiber (Luxembourg), but even then, she tried not to read too much into that, knowing how hard the course was.

"When I saw the first rider on the first climber, I thought 'OK, I feel like I'm going good' but it also could be that she was just on a bad day and I might not have even been up," she said. "So I was using them as a carrot to try and catch them, but waiting also for the time checks to hear where I was at each point."

Comparing to the elites

Competing on different courses – the whole point of this event – there was no way to compare Bäckstedt's ride to the elite benchmark, though a slightly crude measure could be that her average speed was comparable to Marlen Reusser's, albeit in a shorter distance. That said, there was still plenty of positives to take for the Welsh rider who will be up against WorldTour riders in her next time trials.

"It gives me a good feeling for next season in the time trials as well, but for sure you can't really compare our course compared to their course," she said. "You can compare to the first time check, but still it's not completely true because they obviously have longer to do afterwards. I would have liked to have seen how I could have done in the elites, but at the same time I'm really happy to race the under-23s."

Bäckstedt could have opted to race the elite race, but went for the under-23 time trial for pragmatic reasons, saying she was a better chance of winning on Monday's shorter course. She will still be eligible for the under-23s in Montréal next year, and said she will make a decision on category based on which course suits her best.

The under-23 category for women is, at present, different to the men's category, as WorldTour and ProTeam riders are allowed to compete, where they aren't in the men's. WorldTour riders filled the top seven places of the women's TT, but Bäckstedt didn't see that riding at that level was an inherent advantage.

"I think [being a WorldTour rider] can help, but I think on a course like this, it is just if you're strong, you're strong," she said. "For sure, there are some Conti riders out there that have done good, or devo team riders that also do really well on these courses. In the men's, you can see the difference between WorldTour riders and Conti riders, but I think in the under-23 it's still reasonably close in terms of that."

Bäckstedt won't stay in Rwanda to ride the first standalone under-23 road race, where Great Britain will be putting everything behind the chances of Cat Ferguson, which is again just a pragmatic decision.

"It's just about the course," she said. "It's over 2,000 metres climbing and I think that's not the perfect course for me. OK, maybe I could do some help for the other riders, but I think there's other girls in Great Britain that have a better chance at doing a really good result here and helping in the road race that maybe I wouldn't be better than."

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