Lizzie Deignan introduced that she’s going to formally retire from skilled biking on the finish of 2025. The British rider will compete in her final racing season with Lidl-Trek, after agreeing to a one-year contract extension that may deal with guiding and mentoring the subsequent era of biking expertise.
“Typically folks say, ‘Retire on the highest.’ However I’ve no ego or necessity to retire on the prime. I am actually blissful to go full circle and be any individual that helps different folks win bike races once more,” stated Deignan, who revealed that she had initially supposed to retire on the finish of 2024.
“The explanation I initially needed to retire was as a result of I not have the motivation for my very own outcomes. They spoke to me and supplied me a contract within the vein of being a highway captain and any individual that may mentor the youthful riders coming via. That form of sparked a little bit of motivation in me and I believed, yeah, really that is one thing that I’m actually motivated by. I actually take pleasure in bringing out one of the best within the folks round me. I nonetheless love biking.”
Deignan has secured 43 skilled highway victories throughout her profession which spanned 19 seasons since starting in 2007 with International Racing Group. She gained the elite ladies’s world title on the UCI Street World Championships in Richmond in 2015, a Commonwealth title in 2014, and a number of nationwide champion titles. She secured the silver medal on the 2012 Olympic Video games in London.
On the Ladies’s WorldTour, Deignan is the one rider to have gained all three Monuments supplied to the ladies’s peloton securing victories at Tour of Flanders in 2016, Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2020 and the inaugural Paris-Roubaix Femmes in 2021. She has additionally gained Strade Bianche, Ronde van Drenthe, twice Trofeo Alfredo Binda, thrice GP Plouay and three general titles on the Ladies’s Tour of Britain.
In her new mentorship function in 2025, Deignan stated she can be working with the workforce’s incoming expertise on the workforce in among the greatest races on the calendar. Whereas the workforce has 4 new signings they’re already skilled professionals; Niamh Fisher-Black from SD Worx-Protime, Anna Henderson and Riejanne Markus from Visma-Lease a Bike and Emma Norsgaard from Movistar.
Nonetheless, the workforce has signed youthful riders within the earlier two seasons together with twin sisters Ava and Isabella Holmgren (19), Fleur Moors (19), Felicity Wilson-Haffenden (19), and Izzy Sharpe (19).
“I’ll be utilizing my expertise to assist them perceive the right way to cope with strain within the huge races,” she stated. “I feel an increasing number of in biking it is all about marginal positive factors and generally the fundamentals are forgotten. I will be there to remind them of the fundamentals, the sentiments, the instincts and all of the human aspect of it.”
Throughout Deignan’s profession, she raced with Lotto Belisol, Cervelo Take a look at Group and AA Drink-LeontienNL earlier than spending 5 seasons with Boels Dolmans (now SD Worx-Protime) from 2013 to 2018. She signed a contract with Trek-Segafredo in 2018 throughout her first being pregnant, and the workforce supplied her their full help. She joined the roster on the launch of the ladies’s workforce in 2019 as one in every of their first hires.
Deignan returned to racing on the Ardennes Classics in 2019 and took purpose on the World Championships in Yorkshire after which prompt the potential of closing out her biking profession on the Tokyo Olympic Video games in 2020. Nonetheless, she postponed her retirement and confirmed that she was not but prepared to finish her profession, and went on to turn out to be the primary lady to win Paris-Roubaix, and was topped ‘queen of the classics’ in 2021.
The UCI introduced that it had added a maternity go away clause, amongst different securities resembling insurance coverage and minimal salaries, to Ladies’s WorldTeam contracts in 2020, however some groups together with Trek-Segafredo had already been together with a majority of these provisions of their rider contracts earlier than the UCI’s insurance policies.
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