Lizzie Deignan will retire at the end of 2025, it was announced on Friday afternoon.
The Lidl-Trek rider, a former world and British national champion, and winner of Paris-Roubaix Femmes, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour of Flanders, will race on for one more season with her current team.
In a clip posted to social media, the 35-year-old said that she no longer wanted to say goodbye to her children.
“I’m going to retire next year, at the end of 2025,” she said in the video posted by Lidl-Trek. “Winning the rainbow jersey was up there with the best of them and I did it by myself. Looking back I think wow, who was the girl.
“Roubaix [Paris-Roubaix Femmes] was totally unexpected and also the reaction afterwards was bigger than I thought it would be,” she continued. “It was a turning point in women’s cycling. It was special that I got to be the first person to cross the line. I remember winning the WorldTour during the pandemic when Orla was a year and a half old, and to be consistently the best rider in the world when I had a one and a half year old at home was a really impressive achievement.
“My kids are… I just don’t want to say goodbye to them anymore. [I have] no ego or necessity to retire at the top, I’m ready to go full circle and be someone who helps people win bike races again. If I can help the next champions of the sport, then I’m delighted to be a part of that.”
Deignan started her career at the Global Racing Team in 2007, before moving to Boels-Dolmans in 2013, at which she enjoyed some of the biggest successes of her career, including the World Championships win in 2015, and then Strade Bianche, the Trofeo Alfredo Binda and the Tour of Flanders in 2016.
Deignan then moved to Lidl-Trek (then Trek-Segafredo) in 2019, with whom she won La Course by Le Tour de France and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2020, and then the Tour de Suisse and Paris-Roubaix Femmes in 2021.
More to follow…
