Lizzie Deignan

Elizabeth Mary Deignan MBE (née Armitstead; born 18 December 1988) is an English track and road racing cyclist, who last rode professionally for UCI Women's WorldTeam Lidl–Trek. She was the 2015 World road race champion. She is regarded as the best British female road cyclist of her generation, scoring a total of 43 UCI race wins.

Deignan is also the 2014 Commonwealth Games road race champion and a twice winner of the season-long UCI Women's Road World Cup, winning the overall competition in 2014 and the final edition in 2015. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Deignan won the silver medal in the road race. She has won the British National Road Race Championships four times, in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017.

In 2021, Deignan won the first ever Paris–Roubaix Femmes to add to victories in the women's versions of Tour of Flanders and Liège–Bastogne–Liège, becoming the first woman to win a 'triple crown' of all women's Monument classics. Twice winner of The Women's Tour, the most important stage race for women in the UK, she has also won Strade Bianche Donne, La Course by Le Tour de France and the Trofeo Alfredo Binda-Comune di Cittiglio.

Prior to her road career, Deignan won a total of five medals at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in 2009 and 2010, including a gold medal in team pursuit in 2009 with Joanna Rowsell and Wendy Houvenaghel.

Deignan was born in the market town of Otley in West Yorkshire, where she attended Prince Henry's Grammar School, a state comprehensive school. She took up cycling in 2004 after British Cycling's Olympic Talent Team visited the school. She is a graduate of British Cycling's Olympic Podium Programme.^{[failed verification]}

Deignan won a silver medal in the scratch race at the Junior World Track Championships in 2005, she was under-23 European Scratch Race Champion in 2007 and 2008, and came second in the Points Race in 2007. In the 2008–09 UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics, she took a total of seven gold medals after competing in three of the five meetings.

Deignan was a member of the gold medal-winning team pursuit squad at the 2009 UCI Track Cycling World Championships, her second appearance at a senior world championship event. She also competed in the scratch race, where despite being brought down in the closing stages of the race, she jumped back on to claim the silver medal. She completed the championships with a full set of medals, winning bronze in the points race whilst riding with her right wrist numb and strapped up – she was only able to move her forefinger and thumb.

Alongside her breakthrough in the velodrome, Deignan was also making progress in road racing: in 2008 she was part of the team which delivered Nicole Cooke to the road race gold at the World Championships in Varese, Italy, and the following year she joined the Lotto–Belisol Ladiesteam cycling team and rode a number of top level road races. She won the under 23 category of the British National Road Race Championships and the silver medal in the senior category after some controversy. That season she also took a stage of the Tour de l'Ardèche and won the youth classification of the Giro d'Italia. During the winter of 2009–10, Deignan returned to the track, taking two golds at the Manchester round of the 2009–10 UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics and two silvers at the 2010 UCI Track Cycling World Championships. In 2010, she rode for Cervélo TestTeam. That year she won three more stages of the Tour de l'Ardèche and a silver medal in the road race at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Deignan decided to stay with the franchise in its new guise as Garmin–Cervélo throughout 2011. That year she clinched the first of four elite British road titles, holding off Cooke, Sharon Laws and Emma Pooley to win in Stamfordham.