Bäckstedt's back. Alright.

One of the most hotly tipped young cycling stars of recent years, Elynor Bäckstedt’s neo-pro year was decimated by a complex break to her leg. But now she’s rebooted her fledgling pro career. Vern Pitt finds out how

- Vern Pitt

Elynor Bäckstedt owes Cycling Weekly a coffee. She went off to make us one but has since been embroiled in a long phone call about upcoming races, Covid-19 testing and other complex logistics.

In the meantime we’ve been getting to know the family dogs. When she gets off the phone she fills us in on some of the details of what athletes are currently having to go through. She was tested twice before going to her last race in Spain (UCI procedure), once before getting on the plane home, again two days after arriving, and on occasion has to do more still. In the course of explaining all this the coffee is forgotten by everyone involved.

The fact that she can now go to races at all is a relief to Bäckstedt since she spent the vast majority of her neo-pro year laid up with a broken tibia. Are you still a neo-pro, we wonder? “Yes and no,” she says. “Obviously, they all know me now. But I’m still learning, like it’s my first year.”

Her blistering record in the junior ranks in 2018 and 2019, including two trips to the World Championship podium was enough to catch the attention of Women’s WorldTour team and home of Lizzie Deignan, Trek-Segafredo, who signed her for the 2020 season.

Her first few races were standard neo-pro fare working for others, but then fate struck and she suffered a spiral fracture of the tibia of her right leg in a mountain biking accident in May last year. She and her father, Magnus, were descending and she was preparing to stop ahead of a rocky section at the bottom that she knew was beyond her skills, when she slipped and put her leg out. Snap. She suffered the worst pain she’s ever felt while Magnus held her leg – for nearly two hours – to try and stabilise it while mountain rescue were called to evacuate her from the Welsh hills.