Reigning Junior World champion Zoe Bäckstedt rode her first Paris-Roubaix on Saturday, helping teammate Alison Jackson to take victory at the third edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift.
Bäckstedt raced using her father’s Speedplay pedals, used in his victory in the 2004 edition of the men’s race – when the pedals were modified by hand ahead of the race to reduce the potential of mud clogging, and would later be turned into a production run of Speedplay Zero Pavé pedals.
“We’ve always known that Speedplay have been a little bit of a tricky one as soon as you get a bit of mud between the cleats and the pedals to clip in,” Magnus Bäckstedt, directeur sportif for Canyon-SRAM, explained to Cyclingnews after the race.
“And those ones, Richard from Speedplay sat in the bathtub in Compiègne and he ground off the coloured bits of the pedal and so that was just the metal so, I could effectively clip if I got any mud in the cleats.”
“They’ve been around in the house, as well as another production pair of them,” Backstedt continued. “I thought why not give her the option of using them.”
The potentially thorny issue of which daughter would ride the race-winning pedals was easily resolved, as Zoe’s sister Elynor Bäckstedt uses different pedals with Trek-Segafredo.
EF Education-Tibco-SVB rider Zoe and Magnus shared an emotional hug immediately after the finish, with both describing the significance of both Zoe and Elynor riding at Paris-Roubaix for the first time.
“It’s emotional for me racing my first one with Eleanor in the race and him in the team car,” Zoe said after the finish. “And then AJ winning it. It all just tops it off.
Speaking about the race more broadly, Bäckstedt described her tough initiation into the cobbled Classic. “It was really savage that, you know, we started with a bit of a street crit, which was super quick.”
“And after that, [on the cobbled sectors] it was just like remembering what I’ve done is like I did mini Roubaix when I was younger, so the sectors that I hadn’t done in recon were the ones I’ve done like three or four times in the past.”
“I was struggling with positions just a little bit,” Bäckstedt said. “My legs were a little bit tired already coming into it. You know, it’s been a big block of racing for me.”
Bäckstedt finished in 46th place, 4:58 down on race winner Alison Jackson, but described the…
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