Montreal (Canada) (AFP) - Swiss Marlen Reusser retained her world time-trial title in Montreal on Sunday as her main rival Demi Vollering finished a disappointing eighth.

Time-trial queen Reusser celebrated her 35th birthday with an ultimately comfortable victory, but not before Briton Zoe Backstedt gave her a scare.

Backstedt had been quickest at the first two intermediate time-checks on the 39.2km course but Reusser powered away in the second half of the race to beat the 21-year-old by 40 seconds, with German Franziska Koch finishing third, a further six seconds back.

Double world champion Reusser has been virtually unbeatable in races against the clock in the last few years.

She is a four-time European champion and has won time-trial stages at the Tour de France Femmes and Giro d’Italia Women.

It was an unusually long time-trial for a women’s race, where they are usually closer to 20km.

“Apparently I coped well but it made me really nervous,” said Reusser.

“I was really nervous and I was not really sure because we don’t have time trials like this often.

“I’m used to 20km and we had huge discussions with the team, with performance coaches, like ‘what is good pacing?’

“Until an hour ago, I was not 100 percent sure, and also on the course, I was not 100 percent sure.”

Backstedt had been a junior and twice under-23 world champion in the discipline but this race was around 12km further than any previous time-trial she had competed in.

Koch’s bronze medal continued a dream season for the German, who won Paris-Roubaix in April.

Vollering, the European road race champion, was never in the running for a medal.