Lizzie Deignan may extend her career into 2019 to permit her to race at the world road championships on home turf in Yorkshire, although that will in part depend on whether the chosen course suits her ability.
“It’s not out of the question,” she told the Guardian as she prepared to defend her world title on Saturday in Doha. “It hinges on what they do with the route. The rumour is that it may be flat which would be disappointing.”
Deignan, who raced as Lizzie Armitstead before her marriage in September, said the experience of being in Doha for this year’s world championships had prompted her to contemplate continuing until 2019. “There’s been much discussion about the fact there are no spectators here, and thinking about Yorkshire it will be huge and you begin thinking you’d be mad to miss it. I’m open-minded, so never say never.”
As for Saturday’s event, Deignan said she expected “a totally open race”, in which she could not be ruled out of a medal even though she has not given the world championship her full attention this season. “If I have a number on my back, I always go for it. I’m happy to be here. We [Great Britain] have got a couple of options in the finale with different riders and tactics, I’m not going into it telling the team just to look after me. We should have six women there in the thick end which isn’t something we’ve had recently.”
Deignan repeated her call for cycling’s governing body, the UCI, to look closely at the regulations that permitted Sir Bradley Wiggins to use the corticosteroid triamcinolone to treat pollen allergies shortly before three major Tours, in 2011, 2012 and 2013, while remaining within the rules thanks to a therapeutic use exemption, or TUE, for the substance. “I think the UCI definitely need to clarify their rules, they need stricter rules,” Deignan said before elaborating: “You can’t say they [corticosteroids] need to be totally banned, but [the UCI] need to look harder at them and have a longer period when riders are out of competition after an injection.
“The thing with [them] is that you are pushing the boundaries of human ability all the time and if there are loopholes that allows people to push over their limits which is detrimental for everyone. For example, you might have an overuse injury in the knee and be recommended cortisone which means you can make a rapid recovery but it’s not a solution to the long-term problem.
“The pressure is on all the time to be as good as you can, so the UCI need to protect riders and [stricter rules] would stop abuse of the system.”
Speaking to press this week, Deignan refused to respond directly to Wiggins’s criticisms – made before the furore over the leaking of his TUEs by the hacking website fancybears.com – over her three “whereabouts” strikes that almost cost her the chance to compete at the Rio Olympic Games. The first “strike” was overruled by the court of arbitration for sport, which ruled that the doping control officer who called at Deignan’s hotel before a race in Sweden in August 2015 had not made sufficient effort to locate her.
She did, however, hint that perhaps Wiggins should have looked more closely at the circumstances surrounding her three “strikes”. “In my situation I’d take everything I read with a pinch of salt,” Deignan said. “I would sit down with that person and take the time to see their reasons.”
Deignan was keen to underline that the initial missed test was “absolutely not my fault. UKAD, I’m sure, will at some point, maybe, release a statement [recognising that], which would be nice. Obviously the second error was a filing error, not a missed test. But I take responsibility for that. And then the third one I take responsibility for.” That third test was, Deignan repeated, the result of a “family crisis” which she was unwilling to explain at the time and was not prepared to comment on this week. “No, absolutely not, and I never will,” she said.
“I never expected it would blow up on such a scale,” Deignan added. “I was taking advice from people who I thought were experts in how to handle it. And, actually, the moment when I trusted my instincts and made my own statement – I wrote [it] at 3am in my hotel bed prior to flying to Rio – that was the moment when I felt the most comfortable. When I was able to say what I wanted to say and I wasn’t being guided. But I don’t think there is any right way of handling that. It was a perfect storm.”
After finishing fifth in the road race in Rio, Deignan took a few days’ rest and went straight into training for the world championships, with her sights fixed on the team time trial last Sunday, which resulted in a victory for her Boels-Dolman trade team. Even in a mass sprint, which is the most likely outcome at the finish on Saturday, she will have a chance of a medal.
“It feels like the last weekend of a tough year,” she said. “I’m craving some quiet time away from cycling and it feels like the right way to end the season.”
