Lizzie's Profile

In her 16th year as a professional racer, former world champion, four-time British National champion and Olympic silver medallist Lizzie Deignan travels to Paris 2024 for her fourth Olympic road race as part of a four-women-strong British squad, with the aim of challenging for a medal to add to her already impressive palmares.

Beginning her professional road career in 2007, Deignan combined road and track for a number of seasons, picking up medals in both disciplines, including gold as a member of the team pursuit squad at the 2009 UCI Track Cycling World Championships, at just her second appearance at a senior world championship event.

On the road, Deignan began to collect victories, including the national under-23 road race title in 2008, and the following year a stage of the Tour de l'Ardèche and the youth classification of the Giro d'Italia. She won a silver medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, and a stage of the Thuringen Ladies Tour in 2011, along with her first senior national road race title.

Deignan was selected for the London 2012 Olympics where she claimed the first medal for a British athlete at the Games, taking silver in the women’s road race behind Marianne Vos of the Netherlands. 

In 2014, Deignan won the Miron Ronde van Drenthe one-day classic, and improved upon her Commonwealth road race silver from 2010 by taking gold at the Games in Glasgow. But it was in 2015 where Deignan recorded arguably her greatest achievement, winning the UCI World Championships Road Race, beating Anna van der Breggen in the final sprint. It was a year in which she recorded a number of other victories, and Deignan continued her winning streak in 2016, taking four victories in the inaugural UCI Women's World Tour; Strade Bianche, Trofeo Alfredo Binda, Tour of Flanders and the overall title at The Women's Tour. In Rio in 2016 Deignan finished in fifth place in the women’s road race.

She took time out to give birth to her first child in 2018 before returning to the sport  with the Trek-Segafredo Women’s Team in 2019, transferring from the Dutch Boels-Doelmans outfit and recording an overall victory at the OVO Energy Women’s Tour that year. 

Following the lockdown period in 2020, Deignan returned to cycling in strong form, posting victories in the GP de Plouay, La Course by Le Tour de France, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes. The following season, she won the overall classification at the Tour de Suisse Women.

Deignan rode in her fourth Olympics at the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games, finishing 11th, before going on to win the inaugural edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes following an 80km solo effort. She sat out the 2022 season for the birth of her second child, and returned to racing in 2023.

So far in 2024, Deignan has won the Queen of the Mountains classification at the revamped Tour of Britain Women, ahead of her participation as part of the British squad for the Paris 2024 road race, where the team will hope to feature alongside the likes of the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium, and vie for the medals.

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