Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Zoe Backstedt won the under-23 world time trial title in 2025
ByCraig NelsonBBC Sport journalist- Published54 minutes ago
Great Britain's Zoe Backstedt produced a superb ride to claim silver in the women's time trial at the UCI World Road Championships in Montreal.
The 21-year-old Welsh rider could have opted to defend the under-23 title she won last year.
But instead she stepped up to elite level and finished 40.11 seconds behind defending champion Marlen Reusser of Switzerland, who retained her crown on her 35th birthday with a winning time of 50 minutes 24.44 seconds.
Backstedt, who started third from last, set the time to beat as she came home 5.43 secs quicker than Germany's Franziska Koch, who eventually finished third.
Reusser, the final rider to start, was more than 10 seconds behind the Briton at the first checkpoint but increased her pace to claim her second time-trial gold medal to add to last year's victory in Rwanda.
The Swiss star, who has also won two world silvers and a bronze in the discipline, was the form rider going into the championships.
The four-time European champion had been virtually unbeatable at the discipline this year, having won time-trial stages at the Tour de France Femmes and Giro d'Italia Women.
But Backstedt made her battle hard on a long, winding, technical course to secure just the third British medal in the discipline, with Emma Pooley taking gold in 2010 and bronze a year later.
'Excited to see what she can do in the next few years'
The Briton, a former world junior and under-23 time trial champion, won both the women's road race and time trial at this year's British Championships.
"Zoe proved today that she deserves to be up there racing with the elites," British rider Hayley Simmonds told BBC Sport.
"She really put her mark on this race. She was leading for the first two intermediate checkpoints and still finished in second.
"It's not like she went out too hard and died, she just had a very mature race and I am excited to see what she can do in the next few years."
Backstedt will ride again in the women's elite road race at the World Championships on Saturday, 26 September.
Elsewhere, reigning European road race champion Demi Vollering was eighth, while Backstedt's British team-mate Anna Morris finished 16th.
