A family of champions
With champion cyclists as parents, it’s probably no surprise that Elynor and Zoe Backstedt are now in the highest tier of women’s cycling. And the next road season will see three of the family members on rival professional teams. Amanda Powell has been finding out what this might mean for the Backstedts and why they no longer have a living room in their Welsh home...
THEIR sisterly bond, the support, the teasing, the gentle competitiveness, shines through even when one is at the family home in Wales and the other joins us over Zoom from Belgium. Younger sibling Zoe Backstedt even mirrors sister Elynor’s gestures, simultaneously touching their heads for luck when they talk about avoiding cycling accidents, a constant occupational hazard for two women both at the top of their game in this fast and furious sport.
With parents who are also former top-level cyclists (see panel), it’s no surprise the two daughters are making careers in the sport.
But all four of them stress it was never a done deal for Elynor and Zoe to follow their parents’ lead and take up competitive cycling.
“We never thought that they would even consider being cyclists,” says dad Magnus, who won the prestigious Paris-roubaix race in 2004.
His wife Meg adds: “That’s partly because it wasn’t really an option as a career at that time for females, me included, to have a career and make a living out of it.
“So, I don’t think we ever really thought that it was going to be a possibility for them and it makes it even better to know that it is possible now.”
Had they known what lay ahead, they would have chosen a different house to the family home in Pontyclun, Rhondda Cynon Taf, adds Meg.
“Our house has only got a single garage and had we ever thought that they would be part of the whole thing, it would have been a double one straight away,” she says.
“Now, instead, we’ve had to convert the living room to make the second garage, to keep all the bikes and everything else that we need. We’ve had to do a bit of house rearranging to make everything fit, but it’s worked so far.”
“At one point it was enough to run a wellstocked bike shop out of, let’s put it that way,” Magnus adds.
Magnus is chief bike mechanic when they’re all at home, although family gatherings in Wales are increasingly rare now with three of them employed by different global cycling teams.
He and his daughters go on to talk about the interesting prospect of the next road racing season with the three of them in rival teams. He’s recently been named as lead sport director of women’s professional cycling team Canyon/sram Racing.
Although they’re still young – Elynor is 20 and Zoe recently turned 18 – they’ve amassed decades of experience as competitive cyclists between them.
“I did my first race when I was about four in Carmarthen velodrome,” Elynor laughs.
“I believe I was about the same age,” says Zoe. “Yes, I think you learned to ride a bit earlier because stabilisers weren’t so much a thing then, it was more balance bikes, but probably about the same age for your first race,” Elynor adds.
It took a few more years for Zoe to become set on competing. As a young child, she enjoyed the social side more as well as having other activities on the go.
“I did a lot of other sports at the same time like netball, tennis, cross-country running,” Zoe says. “And then it was all getting a lot and I was getting a bit further along in school and I just got to a point where I was like, ‘I’m going to narrow it down to one’. And I picked cycling, thankfully.”
Elynor adds: “We always had the option to do other sports. I was quite into rugby when I was younger. I also did netball, I tried out swimming for a little bit. But cycling was always my number one.
“You’d kind of assume that we would get into cycling because of our backgrounds, but we never got forced into it, which was really nice.”
They’ve competed against each other just twice as young track riders, when Zoe was still under-14 and under-16 and allowed to race against older girls.
“We did the Madison track championships together for two years,” Elynor explains.
Things are all about to change, with the pair in competing teams for the next road season and their dad looking after tactics for a third women’s team.
“I’m excited,” says Elynor. “Obviously we’re in different teams, but it’s always nice to have a family member, especially at races.
“It’ll be nice to have Zoe in the peloton [the main pack of riders] and Dad being in Canyon [team] now from a different perspective [to his former racing career].”
The step up from being a junior to competing as pro racers on a world stage is considerable and Zoe has the benefit of her big sister’s advice and experience in making that move. Elynor says when she joined her pro team three years ago she made the transition from races of around 60km to a maximum of 135km
“Whereas now it’s an even bigger jump,” she says. “Our races have got longer and now it’s averaging at around 135km, whereas before that was the maximum you would get and that would be a big race.
“Whereas now, I did three races in one week that were 150km. So, for them [juniors], whose races are still only say 60, 70km to then add an extra 100km onto a race, you have to be something quite special to not suffer with that.
“I think the junior racing will need to catch up so there’s less of a dramatic effect or they need to make more races in between so that the younger riders can develop into that.
“It can be really mentally tough to go from being at the front when you’re a junior to all of a sudden having to find an extra 100km on top of what
you’re already used to. I have full faith that Zoe will be fine, but I think it’s quite a big jump for a lot of riders.”
Zoe has had three races with her professional road team so far and is excited for more, once her winter of cyclo-cross riding finishes.
“Yeah, I’m excited to get in there [with the new road season],” says Zoe, admitting, “I know I’m going to struggle for sure”.
“I think if I didn’t struggle at least in the first few months, the first season, it may even take me two seasons, then there’s something wrong to be finding that jump easy or if the racing isn’t as hard as I was thinking.”
Zoe is laughing, with her hand over her face, as Elynor answers my question about whether they were competitive against each other from childhood.
“I think we’ve always been competitive, but Zoe’s always been more competitive,” Elynor says. “You know, family board games and stuff, she always used to cheat so I would just give up because I like to play board games by the rules.”
“We’ve always been competitive,” Elynor adds. We always race each other on the bikes, although at the moment that’s quite rare, we always have a laugh and we always do little sprints and stuff.
“It’s always good to have that other person to push you on, even if you’re on a bad day.”
“I’m looking forward to racing against Zoe [professionally], to be honest,” she says, both of them laughing.
Dad Magnus says while there’s always been competition between them they’ve also always been incredibly supportive of each other.
“That probably stands out more to me than the competitiveness between them,” he says. “They are two very different types of riders and two very different characters, but they still have a big love for each other and still talk on the phone really frequently, asking each other for advice and support.
“For me, that’s the most important part of it that they look out for each other and then enjoy the time that they have doing this this sport. “
Zoe and Elynor don’t yet know which road races they might be taking part in and dad Magnus is also looking forward to his own involvement.
“I’ve done a few races with the team this year already where Elynor’s been at the races and I don’t see it as any different to any other, they’re just part of the peloton,” he says.
What about conflicting priorities? He’ll be there to help the women in his own team reach the podium, but at the same he’ll want to see his daughters doing well.
“That’s just a tactical game of the sport from the car from my perspective,” he says of his new job as lead sport director of women’s professional cycling outfit Canyon/sram Racing.
“I can’t pedal the bike for the girls luckily because I don’t think I’d be any good at this point in my career or life, but it’s so different when you’re basically running the team and setting up the tactics. [The riders] have to have the legs to be able to pull that off. And ultimately the stronger, the faster rider always ends up winning however you do it.
“You can do a certain amount with tactics, it’s what’s behind the team, hoping that we’re going to do it. But they [competing riders and teams] can always counter that, so for me it’s really not an issue.”
He’ll surely at least have to keep quiet about his team’s tactics when the family is together?
“Yes, of course,” he replies. “But I think it’s quite nice as well because probably when we get together, it might be a little bit less cycling talk around the table compared with what it has been.”
He says it would probably have been “easier running a logistics company than it is running our lives”, but now he’s hoping to see more of his daughters, not less.
“It’ll just be nice to all just hang out instead of all this discussion of cycling happening. In our house it’s always been 24/7, 12 months a year.
“It’s been really nice travelling together with them at certain points. Elynor and I flew from Scandinavia back to the UK, we were on different flights, but landed at the same time and we were able to spend a bit of time together on the train back from Heathrow to Pontyclun and it’s just little things like that.
“If you’re lucky enough, you’re staying in the same hotel and you bump into them and just say hello and check everything is okay and we carry on with our days and then go in separate directions.
“For me, that was a big important part of the fact that I wanted to take on this job because it means travelling a bit more again. But the fact that I could spend some quality time with the girls every so often as well made a big difference for me.”