Zoe Bäckstedt continued something of a family tradition Saturday when she raced over the pavé of Paris-Roubaix, and she took a family heirloom along for the ride.
The 18-year-old rattled over the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix Femmes while clipped into the pedals her father Magnus used when he blasted to victory in the “Hell of the North” just months before his youngest daughter was born.
“He gave them to me not long after I joined the team,” Zoe said before the race. “We’d just moved me to Belgium and he’d had them at home and he was super excited to give them to me. I’d seen them maybe once or twice before.
“I didn’t know for sure at that time if I was going to be racing Roubaix, so I was just thinking, ‘I really hope I get to race Roubaix now just so I can ride these pedals.’”
The decades-old Speedplay pedals were gifted by Magnus to Zoe as something of a good luck token for her first full Women’s WorldTour season.
The distinctive cross-shape components were stripped of all the plastic casing before Magnus’ winning ride in 2004 to prevent mud clogging the system and scuppering engagement with the cleats.
And it turns out the vintage pedals still contained a sprinkle of Roubaix magic Saturday.
Zoe’s EF Education-TIBCO-SVB teammate Alison “Action” Jackson kicked to a beyond-belief victory out of the day’s early break to end the narrative of a favorite winning the Femmes solo.
“I kept hearing in the radio [Jackson] had 10-15 seconds all for the last 5km, I was screaming into the radio,” Bäckstedt said shortly after she rolled to the line placed 46th.
“When I came into the velodrome and I saw it on the big screen … I’m just so happy for her.”
But it wasn’t all good vibes in the velodrome for the Bäckstedt family.
Zoe’s sister Elynor saw her Trek-Segafredo team’s chances of a third-straight victory upturned when Lucinda Brand and Elisa Longo Borghini crashed, and Elynor finished 76th in the velodrome.
Meanwhile Canyon-SRAM, the team Magnus now directs from the team car, failed to hit the top 10.
Maybe Elynor or Magnus should take the pedals for a ride next time the Bäckstedts venture on a family racing day out.
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