“It just felt like there was a different vibe in the air that morning,” says Magnus Bäckstedt. He’s talking about 11 April 2004. It’s a day the Swede has spoken about countless times since – one that came to define his career. Now, two decades later, he has no trouble recalling it.
“I remember all of it, to be honest with you,” he tells Cycling Weekly, and begins at the top. “Rolling to the start, I could feel that I was on a special day. As soon as we started riding, I didn’t touch the pedals for the first 150km. Even getting through the Forest [of Arenberg] and out the other side, it was relatively easy. I just felt like I was really on top of it.”
The feeling, it turned out, was not misplaced. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Magnus Bäckstedt’s triumph at Paris-Roubaix, a win that became synonymous with his name. That day, he spent almost seven hours in the saddle, racing across rough cobblestones and dirt. A tough slog, many would think. For Bäckstedt, it felt as if he was freewheeling.
“I felt really good in Flanders. I felt really good in Gent-Wevelgem. I think I got second in Gent-Wevelgem that year, just beaten by Tom Boonen in the sprint. Heading into Roubaix, I just had that special feeling that something was up,” he says.
“At around the 200km mark, Fabio Baldato [then Alessio-Bianchi sports director] came and asked me how I was feeling. I said, ‘You might have to check because I don’t think the mechanics put a chain on the bike’,” he laughs. “At that point, everything shifted for me. I was one of the protected riders from the start, but it was definitely all hands on deck to look after me for the final of that race.”
The story is now well-known in cycling. Bäckstedt went on to win from a breakaway quartet, making history as Sweden’s first Roubaix champion. The press swarmed him inside the velodrome at the end. His instant reaction was short and sweet. “It’s fucking unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Bäckstedt’s path to the 2004 Paris-Roubaix was, in his words, a “choppy” one. He had suffered a few bouts of illness early in the season, “a couple of little bumps in the road”, and despite being a contender, his record at the race was unremarkable. In four previous starts, the Swede had placed 7th, 19th and failed to finish twice.
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What he lacked in race experience, though, he made up for in meticulous preparation. “I had been across and done recons probably three, if not four, times that year,” he says. “With the amount of recons I had done, I probably added another five, six years of racing and understood physically what I needed to do.
“Ultimately, the better you are physically, the more luck you make for yourself. I think that’s part of the difficulty and the charm of that bike race.”
The then 29-year-old had also paid close attention to his equipment. Having pleaded with the brand for a while, Bianchi gave him a new, titanium frame for the race. His tyre choice was unique at the time, too. “I managed to convince our tyre manufacturer to allow me to ride on these massive, big tyres that we would laugh at these days. I was the first rider that year to ride on 27mm tyres,” Bäckstedt says.
“There was a lot of discussion beforehand about whether I was going to be able to be allowed to ride them because I might lose too much time on the road,” he adds. Since then, the standard tyre width at Roubaix has ballooned out to 32mm, and speeds have only gotten faster.
Last year, in fact, Mathieu van der Poel won the fastest ever edition, crossing the line after five hours and 28 minutes, with an average speed of 46.841km/h. “The winning time last year was an hour faster than what I won it in,” says Bäckstedt.
(Image credit: Future / Peter Stuart)
Today, it has become a tradition in the Bäckstedt household to huddle together and watch the race every year. “It’s always been a holy Sunday for us,” says the 49-year-old. But there was a time when he couldn’t bare to tune in.
In the two years leading up to his victory, Bäckstedt rode for a Danish team, Fakta, who weren’t on the Paris-Roubaix invite list. “I sat on the sidelines,” he says. “For me, it was so hard not being at that bike race that I couldn’t even watch it. I went out and trained instead.
“Since then, every single second Sunday in April, there’s only been one thing that we do, and that’s sitting down and watching that race together.”
The tradition sparked a desire in his daughters, Elynor and Zoe, who dreamed of racing across the cobbles, like their father had done.
“When they were younger, there was a youth Paris-Roubaix, and they were begging to go and ride it,” Bäckstedt says. “We went across and did that a number of times, and one year, they compiled a letter to the UCI asking them to put on a women’s Paris-Roubaix.
“They wrote that they needed to put a women’s race on because that was going to be the last time they got to ride the cobbles of Roubaix.”
In 2021, that request became reality, and two years later, both Bäckstedt daughters lined up in the elite race for the first time, together. They were probably the best prepared debutants in history. Speaking at the time, an 18-year-old Zoe said her father had been giving her tips “my whole life”. She even raced with a pair of his old pedals.
For the family, this year’s edition is special. Not only because it marks 20 years since Magnus’s victory, but because, for the second year running, he will be alongside his daughters in the peloton. Elynor is down to race for Lidl-Trek, Zoe for Canyon-Sram, and Magnus will be in the latter’s team car, in his role as a sports director.
“I hope we’re all going to be at both the start and the finish together,” he says, “sharing that 20-year anniversary.”
