Lizzie Armitstead is not clear what the road holds for her beyond Rio, apart from marriage to her fiance, Philip Deignan, but she knows she can now build up to next year’s Olympics in almost complete confidence after taking her first world road title last weekend in Richmond, Virginia. “It’s nice to have this one ticked off,” she said after returning to Europe this week. “I’m going into Olympic year with a huge weight off my back.”
Had she not won in Richmond, the Yorkshirewoman would have faced a quandary in 2016. The Olympic course is hilly – she accepts she will be favourite but knows she will have to work on her climbing this winter to be in with a chance – while the world road championship circuit in Qatar is pancake flat. “Going for the worlds next year would be impossible because the two are so different.”
Armitstead has often said that having achieved a major goal, she does not feel driven to repeat it, hence her objectives beyond Rio remain fluid. Retirement is one possibility as she is determined to have a family and a career after cycling. “You need a lot of time for that. After Rio, I don’t know what I’ll do, that’s really just a massive question mark.”
The immediate future for the 26-year‑old, however, includes a break from training until November – “the longest I’ve ever taken” – to ensure that she goes into 2016 fresh in mind and body.
The road home from Richmond was a long one. A convoluted transatlantic journey and a brief stay in Ireland meant she arrived in Yorkshire several days after winning the world road race title last Saturday. In a way that was fitting, however, as her quest for the rainbow jersey lasted six years, until the moment she crossed the finish line in Richmond with her hand over her mouth in disbelief that she had finally attained her goal.
It was 2010 in Geelong, Australia, when Armitstead was placed ninth in the worlds at the age of 21, that her promise first showed – although as a track rider she would have taken a title on the boards over one on the road – and that was followed by the frustration of Copenhagen in 2011 when the bunch sprint did not go to plan and she ran in seventh. “It got serious after 2012, when I got the silver medal to Marianne Vos in London,” she recalls.
In 2014 there was utter frustration at Ponferrada in Spain, when she looked set for victory going into the final kilometre, until her lead group lost impetus and was overtaken within sight of the line. The difference this year, she says, was that the course was far more selective in the final kilometres.
“Last year was the first year I was consistent, I won the World Cup, but I only won one race. I knew physically I could win [the worlds] but it was probably one year too soon. This year I was the out-and-out favourite, under a lot of pressure, but I won three rounds of the World Cup, did so dictating the racing and I knew at Richmond in the last three kilometres it wouldn’t matter if there were still 100 people left in the race. It wouldn’t matter how easy the race was, I could put the pressure on and there wouldn’t be a sweep of riders coming past at the end like there was in Ponferrada, where the final kilometre was flat.”
In the final kilometre, having whittled down the lead group to nine with one last attack, it remained only to get the sprint right. She knew that her previous moves had blunted her rivals’ speed but was forced to take on the sprint from the front, far from the ideal position. “I’d won the Alfredo Binda World Cup in a similar situation,” she recalls. “I found myself on the front and knew if I went to one side of the road I could dictate when they all came at me. I only had to look one way, I knew I was the fastest in the group, my jump was faster, so it was up to them to go early.”
Such sang-froid is possible only when an athlete is physically in total control and Armitstead notes: “In previous world championships I’ve always finished absolutely spent, I’ve given the last drops of energy I’ve got left but [in Richmond] I felt comfortable all day. I knew I would dictate the race, that no one would put me under pressure.”
She joined a select handful of five other Britons to wear the rainbow stripes at senior level for the road race – two men and three women – but, unlike Tom Simpson in 1965, she did not spend the night after the race gazing at her newly won jersey.
“I slept about an hour but it was more a matter of settling in because it was the first moment I’d had to think about it. It’s something you work so hard towards, you don’t anticipate how it will feel. I felt about 20 kilos lighter, as if I’d got a massive monkey off my back.” The monkey is gone – and the road to Rio is clear.
