Lizzie Deignan

Early life

Armitstead 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. Armitstead has been a vegetarian since the age of ten.

2005–2009: Track years

Armitstead 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.

Armitstead was a member of the gold medal winning team pursuit squad at the 2009 Track 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, 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.

2009–2011: Move to road

In 2009, Armitstead joined the Lotto-Belisol 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. In 2010 she rode for Cervélo TestTeam. Armitstead decided to stay with the franchise in its new formation as Garmin–Cervélo throughout 2011.

2012

Following the discontinuation of the Garmin Cervélo women's team, Armitstead rode for the AA Drink-Leontien.nl team in 2012. Armitstead built the whole of her campaign around the summer Olympics, where she would go on to win the silver medal in the road race at the 2012 Summer Olympics, behind Marianne Vos, in so becoming the first Briton to win a medal at the 2012 Games.

2013

Having had to move teams in the past two seasons due to teams disbanding, Armitstead signed for the Boels Dolmans Cycling Team for the 2013 season. Her 2013 season was affected by a recurring stomach illness which was eventually diagnosed as a symptom of a hiatus hernia. Even with her well documented medical concerns Armitstead emerged victorious at the British National Road Race championships – claiming her second white, red and blue jersey.

2014

In April 2014 it was announced that Armitstead had renewed her contract with Boels Dolmans until the end of 2016. Armitstead enjoyed a career-best year, starting with a win at the Omloop van het Hageland. A week later she also won the first World Cup race of the season, the Ronde van Drenthe, after team mate Ellen van Dijk closed a significant gap for her in the final kilometres of the race. At the third World Cup race, the Tour of Flanders, she finished second behind Ellen van Dijk. Armitstead took part in the inaugural 2014 La Course by Le Tour de France in Paris on 27 July 2014, but crashed with 1 km to the finish. A week later she won the women's road race at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Armitstead, overhauled Emma Pooley with 7 km to go to win her first major gold medal. Armitstead won the UCI Women's Road World Cup with a race to spare on 24 August 2014. An 8th-place finish in the Open de Suede Vargarda was enough to secure the overall title.

2015

For the 2015 season Armitstead stated again her intention to build towards the UCI Road World Championships. Armitstead claimed the first overall win of her career taking the Ladies Tour of Qatar stage race, as well as winning two stages. Armitstead then went on to take victories at the one day World Cup races Trofeo Alfredo Binda and the Philadelphia Cycling Classic, along with the Boels Rental Hills Classic.

In June, Armitstead was forced to pull out of the Aviva Women's Tour after colliding with a group of photographers seconds after winning the first stage of the tour in Suffolk. However, ten days later she had recovered sufficiently to win convincingly the British National Road Race Championships for the third time taking her to the top of the UCI world rankings. In August, she sprinted to victory in the final World Cup race of the season, the GP de Plouay, to retain her World Cup title ahead of her main challenger, Anna van der Breggen.

To cap her best season to date, on 26 September, Armitstead won the World Championships road race in Richmond, Virginia, USA, beating van der Breggen in a sprint from a small group of nine riders at the finish line, becoming the fourth British woman to win the world road race title after Beryl Burton, Mandy Jones and Nicole Cooke.

2016

Armitstead's stated aim for the 2016 season was the road race at the 2016 Olympic Games Armitstead started the season as she had finished off the previous one, securing a number of one day race wins, as well as an General classification victory, breaking any curse of the rainbow jersey. Armitstead took 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 of Britain.

Armitstead also took victories in the Boels Rental Hills Classic and Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.

Missed drugs tests

In 2016, Armitstead avoided a ban from cycling that would have prevented her from competing in the 2016 Olympic Games. The charges against her were that she missed three drugs tests within a 12-month period (20 August 2015, 5 October 2015 and 9 June 2016), an offence that could have led to a four-year ban. However, at the Court of Arbitration for Sport Armitstead argued that the first missed test was not a fault of her own but rather that of the testing authorities. She accepted the other two instances. The CAS agreed with her on the first count, and it was declared not to have been a missed test, clearing her to compete. The decision has drawn criticism from various quarters.

In a 5 August 2016 interview, she said she believes that people will doubt her status as a clean sportsperson forever. World squash champion James Willstrop wrote in defence of Armitstead, arguing that the complexity of testing procedures can easily lead to missed tests and noting that she had 16 clean tests in 2016.

Personal life

Armitstead married fellow professional road racing cyclist Philip Deignan in Otley on 17 September 2016.

Classics results timeline

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