Zoe Backstedt combines road racing and cyclocross for WorldTour journey of discovery

Zoe Backstedt hopes a season of road racing at WorldTour level with EF Education-TIBCO-SVB will help improve her as a cyclo-cross rider, with the talented teenager aiming to combine the two disciplines in the years ahead. 

The 18-year-old won the road race, time trial and cyclo-cross world titles a junior but has now made the step up into the under-23 ranks. Despite crashing heavily in the early stages of Sunday’ under-23 European cyclo-cross championships, Backstedt fought back to finish fifth, 1:53 behind clear winner Puck Pieterse. 

After signing with EF Education-TIBCO-SVB for two year the teenager hopes that her first full season as a professional road rider will also help improve her cyclo-cross form. 

“I’d like to (combine cyclo-cross and road),” said Backstedt. 

“I really enjoy cyclo-cross and it’s really good for my technical skills and you can see that when I race on the road."

“When I race on the road you can see the difference in the endurance when you go back into cyclo-cross. When you go into the longer cyclo-cross races of one hour you’ve got the endurance to do that extra 10 minutes full-gas.  

“It doesn’t sound too much of a difference, but it can be.” 

Backstedt hopes to ‘find herself’ during her first year with EF Education and has one eye on the Spring Classics following in the footsteps of her father Magnus Backstedt who won Paris Roubaix 18 years ago. 

“My aim is Just to help the team and try and get some results,” Backstedt explained. 

“Also developing myself as a rider. I don’t see myself going for wins quite yet. It’s going to be quite a big step from junior into the WorldTour ranks. 

“Just finding myself and trying to complete the 140, 160-kilometre days. I can be myself, I can ride to how I like and how the team needs help. I don’t see myself being the best on the mountain days but stick me in Roubaix or Tour of Flanders, that’s where in my head I think I’ll do the best. 

“Anything can happen in the road season and I just have to take it one race at a time.” 

Backstedt finished second in the Coupe de France cyclo-cross event at Nommay last month, only beaten by team-mate Clara Honsinger. She hopes to soon break into the top-10 at an elite World Cup round and is set to battle Anna Kay for British national cyclo-cross title in January.  

“I just want to try and move up the field and get a couple of top 10s in the World Cups or something like that,” added Backstedt. 

“It will mean a lot to me if I can race in the national championships kit next year.” 

Backstedt was competing in her first major championships as an under-23 rider this weekend on a treacherous Namur course. After having the perfect start the British rider crashed heavily on a muddy bank landing on cobblestones at the bottom. 

The crash also resulted in a double puncture and she lost 36 seconds on the early leaders before changing bikes. 

Dutch rider Puck Pieterse rode to an impressive victory finishing 50 seconds ahead of French teenager Line Burquier in second and Shirin Van Anrooij in third. 

Backstedt pulled back to battle Marie Schreiber for fourth but faded on the last lap to finish 26 seconds outside the medals. 

“I’m happy with that, it was an interesting race but fifth is pretty good,” added Backstedt. 

“I’ve just watched the crash back while I was icing my knee, it was pretty spectacular. In the moment when I was crashing I knew it wasn’t going to be good. I had a double puncture and my shifters were twisted. The punctures were okay for the climb, they’re just cobbles so you ride them as hard as you can. 

“Yes it’s going to ruin the equipment slightly but it’s the European championships so you just have to ride it and I wasn’t too far from the pits. 

“I felt really good on the bike. I was catching a lot of people on the climb which was actually my strongest point of the day for some reason. It’s never usually my strongest point but I felt that I could punch really hard up it. 

“I just used that to my advantage and played it safe on that one downhill.”