Zoe Backstedt secured the silver medal in the women’s elite time trial at the UCI Road World Championships in Montreal on Sunday, 20 September 2026, finishing 40.11 seconds behind Switzerland’s defending champion Marlen Reusser on a 39.2km course that represented the longest time trial of her career. The 21-year-old Welsh rider had chosen to step up to the elite category rather than defend the under-23 world title she had won in Rwanda in 2025.
The result is only the third British medal in the women’s elite time trial at the Road World Championships. Emma Pooley took gold in 2010 and bronze in 2011; no British rider had featured on the podium in the discipline since.
A blistering start, a champion’s second half
Backstedt started third from last and set an immediate marker, finishing 5.43 seconds quicker than Germany’s Franziska Koch — who eventually took bronze — as she came across the line. More significantly, she led at both the first and second intermediate checkpoints, with Reusser, the final rider to start, more than ten seconds behind her at the first split.
Reusser, who had won time-trial stages at both the Tour de France Femmes and the Giro d’Italia Women in the months prior and is a four-time European champion in the discipline, paced the second half of the course with greater authority and overhauled the young Briton to win in 50 minutes 24.44 seconds. It was Reusser’s second world title in the event, adding to her victory in Kigali in 2025, and she was competing on her 35th birthday.
Backstedt told reporters she had allowed herself to believe a gold was possible after hearing her early split times, but acknowledged that she had always known Reusser possessed the engine to come back at her. Her stated race plan, as reported by BBC Sport, had been to resist the temptation to ride the opening kilometres as though it were a much shorter effort — the Montreal course was, according to the Guardian, around 12km further than any time trial in which she had previously competed.
British rider Hayley Simmonds, speaking to BBC Sport after the race, said Backstedt had proved she deserved her place among the elite and praised the maturity of her pacing — noting that she had led through two intermediate checkpoints and still finished second, having not gone out too hard.
Backstedt herself told the BBC she was over the moon with her performance and described it as a remarkable day, while also acknowledging that she had come to Montreal targeting gold. Reusser described the victory as a fitting birthday present, adding that the unusual length of the course had made pacing the effort a genuine challenge.
A family shaped by cycling
Her father Magnus won Paris-Roubaix and a stage of the Tour de France during his professional career. Her mother Megan won the British Road Race national title and competed for Great Britain at World Championships and for Wales at the Commonwealth Games. Her older sister Elynor won back-to-back medals at the Junior Road World Championships in 2018 and 2019 and remains a professional rider.
Zoe, the youngest of the family, had accumulated nine world titles across cyclo-cross, road and track by the age of 20, according to BBC Sport. Her 2025 under-23 time trial world title in Rwanda was won by a margin of one minute 51 seconds. She also won both the time trial and road race at this year’s British Championships before taking silver in Montreal.
Road race next for Great Britain
Backstedt is set to compete as one of the leaders for Great Britain alongside Lauren Dixon in the women’s elite road race on Saturday, 26 September 2026. She told the BBC she expected a hard course and expressed confidence in the squad Great Britain would bring to the start line.
Elsewhere on Sunday, Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel won the men’s time trial for the fourth consecutive year, finishing the same 39.2km course in 44 minutes 53.13 seconds to beat Italy’s Filippo Ganna by 57.31 seconds and France’s Paul Seixas, who was third. Evenepoel becomes the first man to win the title four times in a row and equals the overall record held by Germany’s Tony Martin and Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara. Britain’s Callum Thornley finished tenth.