Cycling World Road Championships: GB's Zoe Backstedt wins women's time trial silver

Great Britain's Zoe Backstedt produced a superb ride to claim silver in the women's time trial at the UCI World Road Championships in Montreal.

But instead she stepped up to elite level and finished 40.11 seconds behind defending champion Marlen Reusser of Switzerland, who retained her crown on her 35th birthday with a winning time of 50 minutes 24.44 seconds.

The 26-year-old reigning Olympic champion joins Germany's Tony Martin and Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara as the only men to have won the title four times.

"It's amazing," said Evenepoel on creating his own piece of cycling history, adding to the world time-trial titles he won in Rwanda (2025), Switzerland (2024) and Scotland (2023).

"It was a big motivation and I just have to thank the whole team around me for the preparation... I am super happy, it was a wonderful experience again."

In the women's event, Backstedt started third from last and set the time to beat as she came home 5.43secs quicker than Germany's Franziska Koch, who eventually finished third.

"But I knew also that Marlen was super strong and that she has a very big engine.

Reusser, the final rider to start, was more than 10 seconds behind Backstedt at the first checkpoint but paced her effort brilliantly on the 39.2km course, which was almost double the usual length, to claim a second time-trial gold medal to add to last year's victory in Rwanda.

The four-time European champion had been virtually unbeatable at the discipline this year, having won time-trial stages at the Tour de France Femmes and Giro d'Italia Women.

She added: "My main thing was 'don't go out too hard, don't go out like it was a 22km time trial, go out like it was a 40km time trial and if you have got anything left in the final then give it everything that you have got'."

The Briton, a former world junior and under-23 time trial champion, won both the women's road race and time trial at this year's British Championships.

"She really put her mark on this race. She was leading for the first two intermediate checkpoints and still finished in second.