Lizzie Deignan: Olympic medallist and former world champion on motherhood, women's cycling and the hunger burning brightly

If anything, with a fourth Olympics on the horizon and the British Road Race Championships this Sunday in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Otley-born Deignan has a warning for her rivals.

“I’m as fit as I’ve ever been, I’m as strong as I’ve ever been,” she says from the home she has built with former professional cyclist Philip, back in Yorkshire.

Her hunger remains because having used her pedestal as Britain’s leading female cyclist for a decade to promote equality in her sport, she is not going to turn her back on it now women’s cycling is inching towards that goal.

“I’m really proud and privileged that I get to play a part in the growth of women’s cycling,” Deignan tells The Yorkshire Post.

“Compared to what it was when I started 20 years ago, it’s just unrecognisable. I feel so lucky to still be in a generation of women who get to enjoy the fruits of our labour.

“There are women who are five, 10 years older than me who were just before the change and missed this, while I’m getting to enjoy the opportunities to race a Tour de France.

“I’m earning well compared to when I first started, I’ve worked really hard to be in a position to support my family and I don’t want to walk away from the sport when it’s as professional as it is.

“I ride for Lidl Trek and their professionalism and support is phenomenal, so to walk away from that, when I’ve only just got it, would be hard.”

From the moment she won a silver medal on The Mall at London 2012 - “a life changing moment,” as she describes it - Deignan has used her status to elevate women’s cycling to equal status with the men.

While still not there, huge strides have been made. There is a women’s Tour of Britain now (which Deignan has won twice), a women’s Tour de France over eight days (known as La Course initially, Deignan won it in 2020), and a women’s Paris-Roubaix, the gruelling cobbled classic won by Deignan in its groundbreaking first staging in 2021.

“Whichever way you look at it you’ve got to be realistic and make sure that everything that happens is sustainable,” she says.

“The growth in women’s cycling has skyrocketed, but at a sustainable level. I don’t think it could have grown faster, there are reasons why we don’t have a three-week Tour de France yet, it’s not because of the physical inability of the athletes it’s about the structure and the infrastructure of teams, about a certain generation of women having the minimum wage in order to sustain a peloton that can go on to race for three weeks as well as the rest of the races in the calendar.

“It’s not been an organic process, it’s had to be pushed along the way but I think it’s in a really, really good place.

“If there’s not a three-week Tour de France in the next five or ten years then something has gone wrong somewhere.

“We’ve had the minimum wage now for three, four years, and you’ll see that in the next generation of women, the peloton will be much deeper in terms of how many riders can commit to a professional career. We have so many race days now that you need enough riders to sustain the calendar, so the fact that the next wave coming through will be getting paid to be bike riders will mean there is a big enough peloton to race and sustain a bigger calendar.”

A trailblazer on the track, Deignan has also normalised juggling motherhood with a professional sporting career, something that has helped encourage other women in cycling, and across other sports, to replicate.

Having children in 2018 and 2022, and taking time out afterwards to recover, changed her both physically and mentally as a rider.

“Physically, coming back from my son the second time was much harder than the first time, he was just a bigger baby, I was sick a lot more in pregnancy and lost a lot more fitness,” she explains.

“Then on the flip side he was a lot easier infant, he slept a lot better than his sister did, plus I was four years older.

“I’d love to blame the kids for results at bike races, but there’s an element of getting older as well.

“And I have enough perspective and enough time spent with other parents to know that the juggle is real for everybody.

“Everyone is under a lot of pressure these days and if you want to be a brilliant parent as well as have a career it is really tough, no matter what you’re doing.

“I try not to get too carried away - I just try and keep the perspective that I’m really, really lucky to do what I love for a living.

“And the kids are very lucky that they have a mum who loves doing what she does.”

With all that she has going on at home, has it changed her approach to racing?

Cycling is a team sport, but its winners are the riders who make daring attacks and take risks. Will Deignan still take risks to win a race?

“I’ve never been a big risk taker, I’ve always been pretty safe on the bike,” she counters.

“I’d say it’s more that I have more perspective about failure, if you have a bad race and you come home, my children are not interested in my bike racing, they’re interested in my playing with them and having a smile on my face, so I don’t bring it home. You can’t be in a bad mood about bike racing, it’s not fair on the family.”

It would be foolish, though, to take that as an admission that the competitive instincts are on the wane.

Deignan races to win. She will happily ride in support of team leaders as she may have to do in Paris this summer in the Olympic road race if she is selected for a fourth Games, but as she puts it: “I already have an Olympic silver medal, why would I want another one?”

“There’s only one way to go. I’d be all in for the win,” adds Deignan.

“I still very much love going for the win and I think sometimes that’s maybe my undoing, maybe I should accept going for a medal or a top three or a top five.

“But I’m not interested in that, I’m only in it to win it, and that still is the way I race.

“Things like my win in Paris-Roubaix, I’d have never won that race if I was the kind of rider that played it safe and went for a podium. I might not have had as many podiums as I could have but I’ve got some pretty stand-out wins which I would take every day.”

Four of those came in the British Road Race Championships, the most recent of those coming seven years ago before the birth of the first of her children in September 2018.

Deignan no longer goes into a road race as a favourite, particularly not now there is a new generation of rider - inspired by her deeds - looking to assume her mantle.

Pfeiffer Georgi is the defending champion and will be hard to beat again on the five laps of North Yorkshire coastline that finish with the 22 per cent gradient and three switchbacks up Saltburn Bank on Sunday morning.

Anna Henderson, Megan Barker, Alice Wood and Claire Steels are other names to watch out for.

But Deignan will be lurking, looking for the win.

“We’ve got a really strong generation of women coming through, so for me, winning this race would mean more than it has done in a long time,” says Deignan, who first won her national title as a 22-year-old in 2011.

“The old battles with Nicole Cooke and Emma Pooley used to mean there was a period where we were on top of the world.

“I think we’re getting back to that point again which has resulted in the British Championships meaning more and more again.

“Pfeiffer is pretty exceptional, she’s got a bright future, Anna Henderson as well is really strong.

“I definitely don't have any kind of ego or concerns about being knocked off a pedestal, I’m delighted there’s this next generation coming through.”

Yet while ever she can make a living out of cycling for her family and marry that with being capable of winning bike races, Deignan is a long way off being ready to relinquish her place on that pedestal.

Lizzie is an ambassador for Cycleplan, the cycling insurance specialist.