Attacking downhill with 57 kilometres to go in a 67.2 kilometre event is by no means the usual way to win a road race, but for new junior World Road Race Champion Zoe Backstedt, taking the path less travelled to a gold medal worked to perfection on Saturday.
Already a phenomenally successful World Championships racer in disciplines as varied as cyclo-cross, Madison and road racing, Backstedt’s fifth title in a year and second in this year’s UCI Road World Championships this September came thanks to her daring downhill move on the first descent of the day.
After that Backstedt literally never looked back, opening up a gap of over two minutes by the finish on her rivals to add a second gold to the one taken in the World junior time trial event earlier this week.
As Backstedt told reporters later, “I never planned to go that early, but the moment was there, so I took it, you have to do that.”
“We came down the first little bit of downhill and up the little limb and I managed to get on the inside of a group and kept pushing.
“I made sure I was spinning as much as I could because I knew you’d make up some speed there and I was confident in my descending.
“I took the first corners on that downhill quite sketchily, and I rode them as fast as I could and got a gap on the downhill. Then after the last corner I kicked up the little climb so that was pretty much it.”
Such was the power of her time trial performance – where she pulled out more than a minute-and-a-half on her rivals and crossed the first time check faster than the elite time trial winner Ellen van Dijk – the discussion around the course pre-race seemed to all revolve around just when she would make the attack to ride to a solo victory, not if. Still Backstedt said that she was not the only card to play in the four-rider Great Britain squad, namechecking both Grace Lister and Awen Roberts as the two other options on the day and highlighting Roberts’ climbing talent.
However, as Backstedt also pointed out, “the plan was to get me to go solo at some point. I knew Awen was good enough to have a go, but the moment was there for me so I took it. But if it was me winning or them we would all have been happy whoever it was.”
Due to turn pro with EF Education-TIBCO-SVB next season, Backstedt said it was not all plain sailing once she’d got away, as there was a point when the gap shrank from nearly three minutes to 2:20. However, she paced her effort according to the time gaps from then on, and thanks to her resilience and calculated effort, not to mention some strong fan support, it all worked out.
“I had a lap to go and I knew I could hold it if I got over the climb as hard as possible,” she revealed. “There were so many people shouting for me on the climb it made me dig in to my maximum. That pushed me on.
“Then I had my coach come up to me at three or four kilometres to go and she said ‘you’ve got two minutes’ and I was like ‘will I make it?,' and she said ‘Yeah. The chances are 100 percent.’”
The underlying secret to such a diverse range of two-wheeled success, Backstedt said, came down to keeping external pressure to a minimum and enjoying her racing as much as she could. That, and picking up extra challenges like her Track World Championships success in the Madison earlier this year at the last minute and thereby without raising any expectations.
“My coach asked me and I literally did one session and landed at the Championships the day before, so that one was a bit of a spur of the moment,” she explained.
“But I enjoy riding my bike, it doesn’t matter what the discipline is, there’s no pressure to perform at my best, it’s just having fun. And when I do have fun, my results come.”
