Magnus Bäckstedt (born 30 January 1975)
[L'Équipe, France, 12 April 2004.] is a
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
former professional
road bicycle racer
Road bicycle racing is the cycle sport discipline of road cycling, held primarily on paved roads. Road racing is the most popular professional form of bicycle racing, in terms of numbers of competitors, events and spectators. The two most common ...
. His most notable achievement in cycling is winning
Paris–Roubaix in 2004.
Early life
Born in
Linköping,
Östergötland
Östergötland (; English exonym: East Gothland) is one of the traditional provinces of Sweden (''landskap'' in Swedish) in the south of Sweden. It borders Småland, Västergötland, Närke, Södermanland and the Baltic Sea. In older English li ...
Bäckstedt began as a skier, selected for the national team when he was 14.
Career
Bäckstedt began his professional career in 1996, riding for
Collstrop
Cycle Collstrop () was a Swedish UCI Professional Continental cycling team. It was the successor to Unibet.com, which was mainly sponsored by the online gambling website Unibet.com and as a continuation of the MrBookmaker.com cycling team.
The t ...
before moving to Palmans in 1997. In 1998, having switched to , Bäckstedt came seventh in
1998 Paris–Roubaix
The 1998 Paris–Roubaix was the 96th running of the Paris–Roubaix single-day cycling race, often known as the ''Hell of the North''. It was held on 12 April 1998 over a distance of . Franco Ballerini won the monument classic; his team took a ...
and won the 19th stage of the
1998 Tour de France
The 1998 Tour de France was the 85th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The race was composed of 21 stages and a prologue. It started on 11 July in Ireland before taking an anti-clockwise route through France to finis ...
between
La Chaux-de-Fonds and
Autun.
In 2002 and 2003 he rode for
Team Fakta where he was the strongest rider in 2003. When Fakta closed he went to , where he won the
2004 Paris–Roubaix
The 2004 Paris–Roubaix was the 102nd running of the Paris–Roubaix single-day cycling race, often known as the ''Hell of the North''. It was held on 11 April 2004 over a distance of . Among the participating favorites were 1996, 2000 and 2002 wi ...
. The two favourites,
Peter van Petegem and
Johan Museeuw dropped out after crashes, leaving Bäckstedt to sprint on the track at
Roubaix against three others. The manager of Crédit Agricole,
Roger Legeay, had predicted that Bäckstedt would one day win the race. He said: "He's not a flahute. He's not especially the fastest, but after 260km on the cobbles, it's often the rider who feels freshest who wins."
In 2005 Bäckstedt moved to Liquigas-Bianchi, and came second on the 7th stage of the
2005 Tour de France
The 2005 Tour de France was the 92nd edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It took place between 2–24 July, with 21 stages covering a distance . It has no overall winner—although American cyclist Lance Armstrong origin ...
. He rode for in 2008.
He was eliminated in that year's Tour de France for being too slow. He said:
:I had been going OK, and on that stage we decided to make it hard from the start because we were close enough to yellow to get the jersey. The first 60km were up and down, but I was going fine. Then there was this fourth-category climb and about halfway up I was suddenly short of breath. It was like I shut down from the waist down. I went straight out of the back. I calmed down and got back on top of it. There was 100km to go, but I went OK. I could see the numbers on the power meter and they were normal for the kind of effort you need to get to the finish on your own inside the time limit. I think I would have made it too, but there was a real steep hill just before the finish and my breathing and legs went again. I ended up four minutes outside the cut-off.
Bäckstedt announced his retirement from professional cycling on 6 February 2009, citing a desire to focus on managing his developmental cycling team, Cyclesport.se-MagnusMaximusCoffee.com. Bäckstedt said he will also continue as a consultant with his former Garmin-Slipstream team. The Swede had struggled with a number of health issues during his career, including a serious knee injury, melanoma, and a separated shoulder and broken collarbone.
On 13 November 2010, Bäckstedt announced at the
UK Youth Centenary Gala that he would be coming out of retirement to lead the UK Youth Cycling Team along with
Nigel Mansell
Nigel Ernest James Mansell, (; born 8 August 1953) is a British retired racing driver who won both the Formula One World Championship (1992) and the CART Indy Car World Series ( 1993). Mansell was the reigning F1 champion when he moved over ...
and his sons.
Bäckstedt rode for the MG Maxifuel team in 2013. Prior to round 8 of the
Pearl Izumi Tour Series at
Canary Wharf on 6 June 2013, he once again announced he was retiring and that the race would be his final one in professional road racing, his intention being to continue competing in
triathlon and
Ironman Triathlon
An Ironman Triathlon is one of a series of long-distance triathlon races organized by the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC), consisting of a swim, a bicycle ride and a marathon run completed in that order, a total of . It is widely consider ...
events.
Personal life
Bäckstedt is married to British former cyclist
Megan Hughes
Megan Hughes (married name Megan Bäckstedt, born 5 January 1977) is a Welsh retired track and road racing cyclist. Hughes won the 1998 British National Road Race and represented Wales at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, c ...
. They live in
Wales,
[Cycling Weekly, UK, 22 November 2003.] moving there from
Zulte,
Belgium.
They have two daughters.
[Pezcyclingnews.com](_blank)
/ref> His elder daughter, Elynor, won bronze in the Team Pursuit at the 2018 UCI Junior track championships and bronze at the 2018 and 2019 UCI world championships in the junior women's time trial.
Younger daughter Zoë made her World Championships debut at the 2021 World Championships in Flanders, Belgium, where she won the gold medal in the Junior Women's Road Race and the silver medal in the Junior Women's Individual Time Trial.
Bäckstedt said: "We used to come back here o Wales
O, or o, is the fifteenth Letter (alphabet), letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in ...
every time I had a break. I prefer it to Belgium. You can ride 30 miles between villages here, whereas in Belgium you were stopping for traffic lights."
His sister Cecilia is also a racing cyclist.Siteducyclisme.net
/ref>
Bäckstedt runs a coffee business with franchises in the United States and Sweden. Proceeds from the business support Swedish cycling. In 2013 he joined Declan Quigley to commentate on the Tour of Britain for Eurosport.
Major results
;1992
: 1st
Time trial, National Junior Road Championships
;1993
: National Junior Road Championships
::1st
Road race
::1st
Time trial
::1st
Team time trial
;1995
: Boland Bank Tour
::1st Stages 4 & 7
;1996
: 1st
Overall Boland Bank Tour
::1st Prologue & Stage 5
: 2nd GP D'Isbergues
;1997
: 1st GP D'Isbergues
: 3rd Overall Boland Bank Tour
;1998
: 1st Stage 19 Tour de France
: 2nd Overall Tour of Sweden
::1st Stage 4b
: 1st Sprints competition Four Days of Dunkirk
The Four Days of Dunkirk (french: Quatre Jours de Dunkerque) is road bicycle race around the Nord-Pas de Calais region of northern France. Despite the name of the race, since the addition of an individual time trial in 1963, the race has been h ...
: 1st Duo Normand (with Jérôme Neuville)
: 7th Paris–Roubaix
;1999
: 3rd Overall Tour Down Under
;2000
: 2nd Road race, National Road Championships
: 9th Vattenfall Cyclassics
The Hamburg Cyclassics (currently known as the Bemer Cyclassics for sponsorship purposes) is an annual one-day professional and amateur cycling race in and around Hamburg, Germany. Although the route varies, its distance is always around 250  ...
;2002
: 1st
Road race, National Road Championships
: 1st Le Samyn
;2003
: National Road Championships
::1st
Time trial
::2nd Road race
: 1st
Intergiro classification Giro d'Italia
: 2nd Nokere Koerse
: 2nd GP d'Ouverture la Marseillaise
Grand Prix Cycliste La Marseillaise, formerly known as the Grand Prix d'Ouverture La Marseillaise, is a single-day road bicycle race held annually in February around the city of Marseille, France. Since 2005, the race is organized as a 1.1 event ...
: 3rd GP Herning
: 4th Ronde van Noord-Holland
;2004
: 1st Paris–Roubaix
: 2nd Gent–Wevelgem
: 2nd CSC Classic
Colliers Classic (also known as ''Grand Prix Aarhus'') is a semi classic European bicycle race held in Aarhus, Denmark. Since 2005, the race has been organised as a 1.1 1.1 may refer to:
* 1.1.1.1, a Domain Name System service
* 1.1-inch/75-c ...
;2005
: 4th Paris–Roubaix
: 8th Overall Tour of Qatar
;2007
: National Road Championships
::1st
Road race
::2nd Time trial
;2008
: 1st Stage 1 ( TTT) Giro d'Italia
: 8th Overall Three Days of De Panne
References
External links
*
*
Danish Cycle Union profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Backstedt, Magnus
1975 births
Living people
People from Linköping
Cyclists at the 2000 Summer Olympics
Cyclists at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Olympic cyclists of Sweden
Cycling announcers
Swedish male cyclists
Swedish Tour de France stage winners
Sportspeople from Östergötland County