The opening time trial of the Simac Ladies Tour was a family affair for winner Zoe Bäckstedt (Canyon-SRAM) as she had her father and sports director Magnus behind her in the team car.
The 20-year-old held onto her overall race lead after stage 2 into Assen but the race has become even more of a family affair as all of her Canyon-SRAM teammates have been forced to abandon for various reasons, leaving only Bäckstedt in the six-day race to defend her yellow jersey.
Chloé Dygert had an unfortunate accident ahead of the opening time trial, fracturing her nose when she ran into a door. She still started the ITT, finishing in tenth place, but she would not start stage 2. Soraya Paladin and Maike van der Duin also did not sign in for the second stage due to illness.
"Soraya and Maike were showing some symptoms last night after dinner but with Zoe in the jersey, they were keen to keep racing and help her defend it. Unfortunately, this morning a decision was made together with the team’s medical staff not to take the start," Magnus Bäckstedt told Cyclingnews.
This left only Alex Morrice to support Zoe Bäckstedt on stage 2, 154.8 mostly flat kilometres from Coevorden to Assen – until Morrice abandoned, too.
“Alex’ DNF is not due to any illness that we are aware of at this time. She almost came down in a crash and then couldn’t make it back to the bunch and was too far behind,” explained Magnus Bäckstedt.
Zoe Bäckstedt finished stage 2 in 19th place in the mass sprint and now leads the overall classification by seven seconds ahead of Lieke Nooijen (Visma-Lease a Bike) and eight seconds ahead of Ellen van Dijk (Lidl-Trek) with five more stages to come.
“It was brutal, we had 40.7 [km/h] average. It was just full gas the whole time apart from one road of five kilometres in the middle. Then, coming into the finish, it was just trying to bounce off people and trying to move up as far as I could. I’ve not really done many sprints before, only in the Antwerp Port Epic where the group was quite a bit smaller than it was today. I’m just happy to get through it,” she said after stage 2 in a message shared by her team on Twitter.
As a cyclo-cross rider – she is the reigning World and European U23 champion in the off-road discipline – Zoe Bäckstedt is no stranger to racing alone, but defending the leader’s jersey through four multi-hour road stages without any teammates at all is still a different matter.
“On the remaining stages, we will continue to support Zoe with everything we as a team can as we would in any other race. Tactically, she has to be very smart to try to defend this jersey in the best way she can. She will fight with everything she has, for sure,” Magnus Bäckstedt finished, confirming his trust in his younger daughter in an unusual situation.
