A break-out year

Fully fit after her injury, the 2014 season was Deignan’s best to date and included a gold riding for England in the Commonwealth Games road race, when she overhauled Emma Pooley. Earlier, a repeat win at the Omloop van het Hageland and victory at the opening UCI Women’s Road World Cup race, the Ronde van Drenthe, set her on the way to a dominant season in which she would finish in overall first place in the UCI Women’s Road World Cup.

The 2015 season was to focus on an attempt to win the road race at the UCI Road World Championships in Richmond, USA, in September and the year started well as she took her first stage general classification victory at the Tour of Qatar followed by three one-day World Cup victories.

A crash, with photographers after she had won stage one of the Aviva Women’s Tour in Britain forced her to pull out of her domestic race but 10 days later, she won her third British Cycling National Road Race Championship while victory in August at the GP de Plouay saw her retain her World Cup title. Better yet, in Richmond, Deignan became just the fourth British woman to win the road race world title, following Beryl Burton, Mandy Jones and Cooke, when she beat Anna van der Breggen in an exciting sprint.

The reigning world, Commonwealth and national champion opened 2016 with the Olympic Games once more the focal point of her season and early successes were plentiful with victories at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Strade Bianche, Trofeo Alfrendo Binda, the Tour of Flanders and Boels Rental Hills Classic.

In June, she was a popular winner of her home stage race, the Aviva Women’s Tour before a strong ride in the road race at the Rio Olympics saw her finish just outside the medals, in a creditable fifth.

Following a break in which she had her first child, Deignan returned with the Trek-Segafredo Team in 2019 and a hugely popular victory in the OVO Energy Women's Tour of Britain.

The set her up for the highlight of her year - a home UCI Road Race World Championships, at which the women's road race would travel through her home town of Otley.

Deignan more than lived up to her reputation as one of Yorkshire's finest, launching a determined chase of solo attacker Annemiek van Vleuten, who would eventually pull away from the field to record a dominant win. But her courage and tenacity was appreciated by the entire crowd as she crossed the finish line in Harrogate, where she was greeted by Orla and husband Philip.

The 2020 season started late, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but that did not stop Deignan adding yet more noteworthy victories to her career tally - the GP de Plouay and Liege-Bastoghne-Liege one-day races and, most impressive of all, La Course by Le Tour de France, the one-day race held in Nice in conjunction with that year’s delayed Tour de France, where she edged out her old rival Marianne Vos from the Netherlands.

The 2021 season was again one in which the Olympic road race would play a prominent part and she warmed up for Tokyo in winning fashion at the Tour de Suisse in June, winning the two-stage race by one second overall from local Swiss rider Elise Chabbey.

Away from the bike

A keen all-round athlete at Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Otley, Deignan only took up the sport when she attended a British Cycling Talent Team session at her school to avoid a maths lesson and try and beat a schoolfriend who challenged her.

A vegetarian since the age of 10, she had tasted success in athletics, at 800 and 1,500-metre track races, and even played as a goalkeeper for her school football team before discovering cycling.

Married to Philip, a fellow professional road cyclist, in 2016, Deignan gave birth to her first child, daughter Orla in September 2018.

Palmarès