Cycling has one less family duo as Zoe Bäckstedt go their separate ways: "I think he's happy"
Cycling
Zoe Bäckstedt and her father, Magnus Bäckstedt, will no longer be part of the same cycling team heading in to 2025. The former Paris-Roubaix winner has departed Canyon-SRAM and joined the Cofidis Women team, marking a significant change for the father-daughter duo who have spent the past few seasons working together.
"He told me a while ago. I was on holiday actually, and he called me up and just told me that he wasn't going to be working with me for the 'cross season as much and that he was moving teams. It's not that I can do anything about it, it's not my job, it's his job," Zoe shared with Cyclingnews during Canyon/SRAM's training camp in Portugal.
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Despite the separation, Zoe is supportive of her father’s new role. "When I found out that he was also going to Cofidis, I was super happy for him and it's cool to see him working, speaking French all the time in meetings. You sit there and watch him in a meeting and his brain is just (whirring) and there's smoke coming out of his ears thinking of things. I think he's happy."
Magnus, who has a wealth of experience both as a rider and a mentor, is optimistic about his new position. "Cofidis is a prestigious team, well known in the world of cycling. The challenge with the women's team is exciting. I will do everything to contribute and continue to build an environment that is favourable to the development of female riders," he said.
His focus will include leveraging his expertise to strengthen Cofidis Women in various races. "I want to bring my experience, in the classics of course but also in all the races where I will be asked to go to allow the team to grow and reach the UCI World Tour."
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- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024