Kigali: 17 hundredths of a second, Golden for Backstedt

Briton, Zoe Backstedt, a three-time junior road world champion, scorched to victory at the U23 women’s time trial at the Road World Championships. She set a time of 30:56.16, beating Vitoria Chladonova’s (Slovakia) time of 32:47.01 by a huge 1:50 to take the win, while Federico Venturelli (Italy) set the time of 33:07.74 for the bronze medal. 

“I think either this one or Nationals would be my toughest time trial to date. Nationals was a bit hillier, with a really, really steep section that made it super hard. But this course was difficult in different ways-the altitude, the humidity - it was also super, super savage.”

-Zoe Backstedt

Jakob Soderqvist (Sweden) took the victory and a first rainbow jersey in the men’s U23 TT on the 31.2km course to win by 1:04. Racing at this first World Championships, New Zealand’s Nate Pringle barely held onto second, only beating Maxine Decomble (France) by 17 hundredths of a second at the line, with the Frenchman taking bronze. 

“I think that at points I thought I could pull off a performance like this, but, for sure, it was not something that I expected to do in that way. I know that some stars have to align and your really have to have good preparations.”

-Jakob Soderqvist

“It’s surreal. It was a bit of a surprise, but I don’t really have anything to compare it to. I just went as hard as I could and then tried to recover.”

-Nate Pringle