After a virus disrupted her road campaign last season, Zoe Bäckstedt is preparing for a Spring Classics campaign and another shot at her favourite race, Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift.
The 20-year-old competed in her first Paris-Roubaix in 2023 and then finished 16th in the prestigious one-day race last year and hopes to replicate the success of her father, Magnus Bäckstedt, who won the men’s version.
Bäckstedt completed her cyclocross campaign on Sunday, winning a second under-23 women’s world championships title in Liévin.
“I'll have a small break, and then I'll start preparing for the Classics in a few weeks time. I’ll ride until Roubaix and then take a big off-season," she said.
Bächstedt explained that her illness last season caused a reshuffle of both her road and cyclocross racing schedule.
I didn't do so many Classics last year," she said. “We approached my ‘cross season a little bit differently, of course, because over the summer this year, I was sick.
“I wasn't able to do the full schedule that I wanted to do on the road. My whole road and ‘cross season would have looked different if I'd had a smooth summer. You have these obstacles in life, it was just adapting that."
She will be racing in her third season with Canyon-Sram zondacrypto in 2025 and says she is still learning from many of the team's veteran riders.
“My learnings from the Classics ... is just to learn from the older riders in the squad. They've done all of the races hundreds of times and they know everything, also just being able to trust yourself and learning from each other," she said.
“It’s about trusting what you know and what you want to do, just going all in and having some fun out there.
“I enjoy them [the Classics] and especially Roubaix. That's basically a cyclocross race with a bit of road in the middle. I don't know what else there is to love about it.”
Bäckstedt was a firm favourite coming into the UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships in Liévin and had to overcome two first-lap crashes before riding back to the front.
Racing for Great Britain, she was also part of the winning team that secured the victory in the mixed relay, and so she came away from Liévin with two gold medals.
“It feels pretty surreal,” said Backstedt. “I'm super happy with it. “Coming out of these championships with one title was already an achievement, to come out with two after the relay as well is something else.
“People can put pressure on me from the outside, but you just don't listen to it, you don't take it, and it's whatever you put on yourself,
“I just try to keep it as fun as possible and just go out to enjoy racing my bike. It may not look like it in that first lap, but it was actually a pretty fun course and pretty hard mentally.
“There was a lot of looking with where the ruts were and what the ruts were like. It was a little bit tiring on the brain in the end. I really enjoyed it.”
Talking about her first-lap crashes, Bäckstedt said, “I knew as soon as I crashed and I got back on the bike, the adrenaline really kicked in, and then any moment I could push, I was fully pushing and giving it all.
“I came back quite nicely, and after that, I was just trying to hold the gap as much as possible and not let it slip.
“There were a few dodgy moments, but it was just such a different course to what it was like this morning in recon.
“I didn't really expect it to change like this, I knew it was going become muddy and slippery, there was a lot of corners that were off-camber in the opposite direction to what you want them to be.”
After having her road season in 2024 impacted by a virus, Bäckstedt returned in style, taking her first professional victory at the Simac Ladies Tour in the individual time trial and placing third overall.
However, the youngster said that the stage race was just used to build fitness for her cyclocross season. “That stage race for me was like a stepping stone to get better for the 'cross season,” Bäckstedt said.
“Just to bring the race form back in. I didn't go there to take a podium or become third in the overall.
“I just went there to get a stage race in the legs and see how that went. In the end, I came out with a World Tour stage win and a GC podium, so I was pretty shocked also.”
