After a virus disrupted her street marketing campaign final season, Zoe Bäckstedt is making ready for a Spring Classics marketing campaign and one other shot at her favorite race, Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift.
The 20-year-old competed in her first Paris-Roubaix in 2023 after which completed sixteenth within the prestigious one-day race final 12 months and hopes to copy the success of her father, Magnus Bäckstedt, who received the lads’s model.
Bäckstedt accomplished her cyclocross marketing campaign on Sunday, profitable a second under-23 girls’s world championships title in Liévin.
“I will have a small break, after which I will begin making ready for the Classics in just a few weeks time. I’ll journey till Roubaix after which take an enormous low season,” she stated.
Bächstedt defined that her sickness final season brought on a reshuffle of each her street and cyclocross racing schedule.
I did not achieve this many Classics final 12 months,” she stated. “We approached my ‘cross season a little bit bit in a different way, after all, as a result of over the summer season this 12 months, I used to be sick.
“I wasn’t capable of do the total schedule that I wished to do on the street. My complete street and ‘cross season would have appeared completely different if I might had a easy summer season. You may have these obstacles in life, it was simply adapting that.”
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She will likely be racing in her third season with Canyon-Sram zondacrypto in 2025 and says she continues to be studying from most of the staff’s veteran riders.
“My learnings from the Classics … is simply to be taught from the older riders within the squad. They’ve finished the entire races a whole lot of instances they usually know all the pieces, additionally simply having the ability to belief your self and studying from one another,” she stated.
“It’s about trusting what you already know and what you wish to do, simply going all in and having some enjoyable on the market.
“I get pleasure from them [the Classics] and particularly Roubaix. That is principally a cyclocross race with a little bit of street within the center. I do not know what else there may be to like about it.”
Bäckstedt was a agency favorite coming into the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in Liévin and needed to overcome two first-lap crashes earlier than driving again to the entrance.
Racing for Nice Britain, she was additionally a part of the profitable staff that secured the victory within the blended relay, and so she got here away from Liévin with two gold medals.
“It feels fairly surreal,” stated Backstedt. “I am tremendous proud of it. “Popping out of those championships with one title was already an achievement, to come back out with two after the relay as properly is one thing else.
“Individuals can put strain on me from the surface, however you simply do not take heed to it, you do not take it, and it is no matter you placed on your self,
“I simply attempt to maintain it as enjoyable as doable and simply exit to get pleasure from racing my bike. It might not appear like it in that first lap, but it surely was really a fairly enjoyable course and fairly exhausting mentally.
“There was numerous trying with the place the ruts had been and what the ruts had been like. It was a little bit bit tiring on the mind ultimately. I actually loved it.”
Speaking about her first-lap crashes, Bäckstedt stated, “I knew as quickly as I crashed and I bought again on the bike, the adrenaline actually kicked in, after which any second I might push, I used to be absolutely pushing and giving all of it.
“I got here again fairly properly, and after that, I used to be simply making an attempt to carry the hole as a lot as doable and never let it slip.
“There have been just a few dodgy moments, but it surely was simply such a unique course to what it was like this morning in recon.
“I did not actually anticipate it to vary like this, I knew it was going develop into muddy and slippery, there was numerous corners that had been off-camber in the wrong way to what you need them to be.”
After having her street season in 2024 impacted by a virus, Bäckstedt returned in model, taking her first skilled victory on the Simac Girls Tour within the particular person time trial and putting third total.
Nevertheless, the teen stated that the stage race was simply used to construct health for her cyclocross season. “That stage race for me was like a stepping stone to get higher for the ‘cross season,” Bäckstedt stated.
“Simply to convey the race type again in. I did not go there to take a podium or develop into third within the total.
“I simply went there to get a stage race within the legs and see how that went. In the long run, I got here out with a World Tour stage win and a GC podium, so I used to be fairly shocked additionally.”