Jane Zoe Backstedt

Backstedt grew up in a racing household in Wales. Her father Magnus won Paris-Roubaix in April 2004, five months before she was born, her mother Megan Hughes also raced professionally, and her older sister Elynor turned professional first. She rode road, cyclo-cross, track and mountain bike through her teens rather than choosing between them, and has carried three of the four into her senior career.

At the 2021 world championships in Flanders she won the junior road race from a sprint with Kaia Schmid and took silver in the time trial behind Alena Ivanchenko. In Wollongong the following year she won both, the time trial by a minute and a half and the road race alone by more than two minutes. In between came the junior cyclo-cross world title in Fayetteville, and the junior madison title in Tel Aviv with Grace Lister.

She signed with EF Education-TIBCO-SVB at seventeen and joined Canyon//SRAM for 2023. The under-23 European time trial title at Drenthe came that summer, won by 57 seconds. Her first professional win arrived in 2024 at the Simac Ladies Tour, where she took the opening time trial, led the race into stage three and finished third overall behind Lotte Kopecky.

The road results came together in 2025. She won the Baloise Ladies Tour overall, the British elite time trial title, and the under-23 world time trial in Kigali, where she beat Viktoria Chladonova by a minute and fifty seconds. Her senior wins so far have come almost entirely against the clock.

The cyclo-cross winters ran alongside all of it. She was second in the under-23 race at the 2023 world championships, then won the title in Tabor in 2024 and again in Lievin in 2025, where she also rode Great Britain's winning mixed team relay. She moved up to the elite field for 2025-26 and finished seventh at the world championships in Hulst, a minute and five seconds down on Lucinda Brand.