The Great Britain Cycling Team got the 2023 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships off to a flying start with a sensational silver medal in the team relay event.
The team of Zoe Backstedt, Joe Blackmore, Cat Ferguson, Alfie Amey, Anna Kay and Thomas Mein all played their parts to perfection, resulting in a silver medal for Great Britain in the first ever outing of the team relay as an official world championships event.
Zoe Backstedt kicked the race off for Great Britain as the only female rider to take to the start line, putting in a strong performance to position the team well in the field, before handing over to fellow under-23 rider Joe Blackmore. Blackmore worked hard to complete the particularly dry course in the team’s fastest lap time of 06:35, moving up into fourth place ahead of the third lap.
Junior women’s rider Cat Ferguson took the third lap in her world championships debut, keeping the team comfortably in mid-position at the half-way point and paving the way for junior male Alfie Amey. Amey stormed through the course, gaining considerable time on dominant homefavourites, The Netherlands,to move Great Britain into second positionwith just a two second gap.
Elite riders Anna Kay and Thomas Mein took the final laps, with Kay putting in a skillful ride on her return from recent injury to go head-to-head with Dutch rider Fem Van Empel and managing to keep in contention for the silver medal as she handed over to Mein.
Mein headed into the final lap with confidence and,following a strong set up from his teammates, delivered a powerful ride to keep in contention for the podium and crossed the finish line with a total time of 42:36.Mein’s ride meant Great Britain beat the Belgian team by just two seconds to secure the first ever official silver medal in the event and the Great Britain Cycling Team’s first medal of this year’s world championships.
On winning the silver medal, Blackmore said: “It’s pretty special, my first podium at a world championships and it’s good to do it with everyone. The course is really fast - we might get some rain overnight which might make it interesting on race day, but for the relay lap it was really good.”
On team tactics, Backstedt added: "We figured that I probably had the best start and then we could use our other male riders a bit later into the race when the others were using their female riders, but yeah it was just really cool to be the only woman on the start line, going full gas and to only be 30 seconds down at the finish, I was over the moon with that.”
Tomorrow’s schedule will start with Cat Ferguson, Imogen Wolff, Emily Carrick-Anderson and Elizabeth McKinnon in the junior women’s race at 10am (UK time). The under-23 men will take to the start line at 12pm (UK), with Joe Blackmore and Corran Carrick-Anderson representingGreat Britain. The second day of competition will be completed with the elite women’s category, with Anna Kay competing for the Great Britain Cycling Team.
You can watch the men’s under-23 and elite women’s races via BBC iPlayer or all races are on GCN.
