Zoe Backstedt destroys field to grab junior time trial gold for Britain at Road World Championships

Britain’s Zoe Backstedt lived up to her billing as favourite in the women’s junior time trial, grabbing gold in a stacked field by an incredibly sizeable margin from Justyna Czapla (Germany) and Febe Jooris (Belgium). “This was one of my biggest goals of the season and I’m so happy – I did so much work for this, I’m just so happy it paid off,” she said after a brilliant performance.

“This one means a lot.” Ad The junior women raced over a 14.1km circuit in Wollongong in more perfect Australian spring conditions, 19 degrees with the slightest of breezes. On a relatively short course, the times on the leaderboard were expected to be tight – and they were for much of the morning.

World Championships'A birth of one of the best!' – Backstedt wins TT gold by huge margin20 MINUTES AGO Hannah Kunz (Germany) set the early pace with a 20:32.96, and it took a very strong ride from the rising talent of Anna van der Meiden (Netherlands) to beat that, the Dutch rider crossing the line an impressive 16 seconds quicker. Van der Meiden has already signed with Team DSM for next season and it was easy to see why as she completely at home on the bike.

After Van der Meiden took her place in the hotseat, the next nearest challenge came from Elisabeth Ebrad (Estonia) who had been 12 seconds down at the split, but managed to make that up on the second half of the course to cross the line just in the red by less than a second. But while the Estonian was less than a second down, Eliska Kvasnickova (Czech Republic) managed to wrestle the lead from van der Meiden by just 0.83s as she powered across the lead to take that top spot.

But with the European champion and the heavy favourite still to go, it was set to be a nervy wait. Backstedt was on the