Zoe Bäckstedt: "I planned to just go as hard as possible for the whole thing"

Zoe Bäckstedt was on a whole other level at today's time-trial at the World Championships, where she decimated the field to get a comfortable gold medal.

“I planned to try and get under 20 minutes. That was our goal. This year I knew that I wanted to win it and came in hoping to win it and I pulled it out of the bag on the day," she said in a post-race interview. The Briton was the main favourite, and early in the day it seemed apparent that she was heading into a victory. 

The scale of the dominance was however nevertheless a surprise, as she rode 14.1-kilometer route some 3.6Km/h faster than second placed rider. She won by a whole 1:36 minute gap, which is the same that second placed Justyna Czapla had over 26th place. It was an obliteration of the field, with the 17-year old riding virtually at the same pace as the best Elite riders.

“Basically because it was only 14 kilometres, I planned to just go as hard as possible for the whole thing because there was a couple of descents and then through the corners you can recover as well,” Bäckstedt said. “Any moment where you could put power down it was going as hard as possible to try and get my best time.”

“I would have loved it if the elites had done the same lap as we had, and they had just done two laps or something like that, so I could kind of compare times. But yeah, I mean, it gives me some good markers for how I'm going and hopefully next year I'll get some good time trials in on the road," she said. She has got already a trainee contract with World Tour team EF Education-TIBCO-SVB, and will turn professional from January onwards with only 18 years of age. This however seems to be no limitation for her, as she frequently mentioned her future Elite competitors after this win.

“But I reckon I could have done a decent time in the elites, but we'll never know because obviously conditions are different. They do longer, you have to pace it differently and everything like that. So I can't fully say," she concluded.