Multi-discipline junior world champion Zoe Bäckstedt has signed with EF Education-TIBCO-SVB as a trainee and will start racing in the pink kit starting August 1, 2022.
The 17-year-old multitalent is a star on the rise, having won the junior women’s road race at the 2021 UCI Road World Championships where she also earned the silver medal in the junior women’s time trial. She then went on to win her second world junior title just months later, this time at the 2022 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships.
Additionally, Bäckstedt is a three-time European junior track champion and a junior European cyclo-cross champion as well.
After taking a short break following her rainbow ride at the Cyclo-cross World Championships, Bäckstedt won two of the three stages, the overall classification, and the points jersey at the EPZ Omloop van Borsele.
“As the current Junior World Champion in both road and cyclocross, Zoe is clearly very talented,” said Linda Jackson, founder and owner of EF Education-TIBCO-SVB in a press release.
“Our goal is to support her overall development and nurture her growing talent. I am so excited at the prospect of what we are going to achieve together.”
EF Education-TIBCO-SVB is an American-registered team with an active racing calendar in both Europe and the US, on road as well as dirt, including the Life Time Grand Prix series. Veronica Ewers, another developing rider, has been blossoming as part of the team’s development program. She’s earned herself a guest-riding spot in 2021 and has been earning her now-pro spot ever since with outstanding performances at Festival Elsy Jacobs, Itzulia Women and Navarra Women’s Elite Classics.
It was this opportunity to develop as a road racer while continuing to compete in multiple disciplines that appealed to Bäckstedt.
"I'm so excited to be joining Women's WorldTour team EF Education-TIBCO-SVB as a trainee and I can't wait to start racing for them later this year. I love their multi-discipline approach to cycling,” she said.
“Plus I'm looking forward to wearing the best kit in the peloton.”
A product of a cycling family, Bäckstedt comes from quite the cycling pedigree. Her father, Magnus Bäckstedt, is a Swedish former professional road race and time trial champion who’s career highlights include winning Le Samyn, a stage at the Tour de France and the 2004 Paris-Roubaix. Her mother, Megan Hughes, a former professional track and road racing cyclist who won the 1998 British National Road Race and the Welsh National Road Race Championships in 1999.
Her older sister, Elynor Megan Bäckstedt, currently races for the UCI Women's WorldTeam Trek–Segafredo.
