Lizzie Armitstead: When the phone rang at 6am I felt like I had been violently punched in the stomach. I will have to live with it as long as I race.

Lizzie Armitstead is self-aware enough to know which chapter of her new autobiography readers will turn to first. Having flicked through the opening few paragraphs about the photographs she has stuck on the wall of her Monaco apartment to remind her of home and having bypassed the bit about how she was talent spotted while a student at Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Otley, most will turn straight to chapter 13. Unlucky for some, it’s appropriately entitled All The Roads Have Potholes and deals with those missed drugs tests which last year saw Armitstead facing a four year ban under the sport’s ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule.

Her appeal against one of the missed tests was subsequently upheld, but the furore overshadowed the 28-year-old’s Rio Olympics and in the minds of many cast doubts on both her past achievements and her future in the sport.

“I know that’s what a lot of people are interested in, the only thing perhaps,” she says, nine months on and clearly in a much better place. “At the time I issued a statement saying that all I had been guilty of was making a genuine mistake and insisted that I would never cheat for a sport I loved. I didn’t want to say any more. The people around me knew what was going on in my life at the time and I thought and still think I have a right to privacy.”

That 1,275 word statement, penned in the early hours of one morning, dripped with the raw emotion of an athlete who knew that in a sport plagued with doping scandals the saying there’s no smoke without fire might forever haunt her. It might still, but her autobiography, Steadfast, which was delayed so she could write the crucial final chapters, is at least her chance to set the record straight.

Amitstead’s first missed test came during the UCI Women’s Road Race in the summer of 2015. She had been staying in the team hotel, but when the UKAD official arrived at 6am the receptionist refused to give out her room number and, as her mobile was on silent, they left.

The second she has always claimed was down to an administrative error which caused her to give her address as Monaco rather than Leeds. The third came on June 6 last year when she and her now husband, fellow cyclist Philip Deignan, grabbed a chance to fly to Ireland to visit his terminally-ill father.

“When the phone rang at 6am, it felt as if I was being violently punched in the stomach,” she says of realising the Doping Control Officer was standing outside her apartment in Monaco. “I went into shock and began shaking uncontrollably.

“I was absolutely certain that I had filled in my whereabouts correctly. Catastrophically I hadn’t. I will have to live with that burden as long as I race. I still wake up in the night sweating and triple-checking my phone to be certain I haven’t done it again.”

While making no excuses, Armitstead puts the error down to the stress of the situation she found herself in. Ever since she and Philip met, his father Gerry, had been suffering from cancer and whenever their schedules allowed the couple would travel back to Ireland together.

“We hadn’t planned to go, but Philip pulled out of the Giro de Italia two days before it was due to finish with severe fatigue. I had just won a race in Holland and had flown home and at the last minute we decided to take the opportunity fly to Ireland.

“Every elite athlete has to provide an address where testers can find them for one hour every day. My default address is Monaco, but I updated my whereabouts to let them know I was going to be in Ireland.”

Armitstead’s father-in-law’s health deteriorated and while she cancelled various sponsorship commitments so they could extend their stay in Ireland, she forgot to update her drug testing information which reverted to her default address.

“I still can’t get my head around why I didn’t update it. I always check every single night for the next morning – I even have an alarm set on my phone. I just think I wasn’t functioning as normal.”

While Armitstead was temporarily suspended from competing, when her appeal against the first missed test on the grounds the official hadn’t done enough to find her was upheld the ban was lifted and she assumed it had been nothing more than a temporary distraction from her main goal – getting on the podium for the second time at the Olympics.

However, when the story of the missed tests broke in the Daily Mail, Armitstead, who was on her way to Rio, admits she felt helpless.

“My darkest moment happened in the baggage claim just after we landed,” she says. “The suitcases were delayed and as I was stood waiting for my bag, somebody walked over to me and said ‘I thought it was you’, and then walked away. I went into the corner and cried. I felt so alone and helpless. I was desperately sad, but in the end I thought about my family and everything else going on in the world. I told myself ‘stop being selfish and dramatic, get up and get on with it’.”

Armitstead has always been a no-nonsense kind of athlete. It comes in part from being brought up in a house where her talent was supported but never indulged and where honesty and plain speaking were prized.

Having been the first of Team GB to win a medal at London 2012, securing silver in the women’s road race, Armitstead was cast as something of a golden girl, but she’s always had a hard edge.

Previously she’s spoken out about the sexism which she witnessed in her early days in the sport and remains unapologetic about accusing teammate Nicole Cooke of riding for herself at the Road Cycling World Championships in 2011. However, she admits that the Yorkshire grit which runs through her did take a momentary wobble when she took the start line in Rio.

“It wasn’t as if I felt like I was being willed on by the nation,” she says. “I felt like I had bricks in my back. I wanted to race because I had earned the right to be there. Pulling out would have almost felt like an admission of guilt. I had put four years of hard work in, but maybe subconsciously I didn’t have the will to win.”

The will is back now. After Rio, Armitstead was grateful to step out of the spotlight and her marriage last summer to Phil was a relatively low-key affair.

While her autobiography has been written in her maiden name, she now prefers to use her married name – against the advice of some who thought it might cost her financially.

“People said I should remain Lizzie Armitstead, that I was a brand. Changing my name was absolutely not a political decision, it was a person choice. I wanted to be a family, to be one of the Deignans.”

Whatever she calls herself, the events of last summer have clearly left their scars. Armitstead, who will be riding with Boels Dolmans in this year’s Tour de Yorkshire, admits that she no longer likes doing interviews or media, but she was determined not to allow outside speculation and gossip to rob her of the sport she loves.

“Despite everything, last year I was the only rider to finish in the top five in both the Olympics and World Championships, which I think is quite an achievement and there is so much to look forward to.

“I think it’s fantastic that Yorkshire has been awarded the World Road Race Championship for 2019. I would like to be there. Wherever I am in the world, that’s the place where I really feel at home.”

■ Steadfast: My Autobiography by Lizzie Armitstead is published on April 20 by Blink Publishing priced £20.