'I don't see any reason why we can't aim for the gold' - Lizzie Deignan sets high Paris Olympic road race target for GB

Nothing less than gold will do, Lizzie Deignan has said as she considers the upcoming Paris Olympic Games.

"It would be the gold medal for me or my team-mates," she tells Cycling Weekly when asked what would constitute success in Paris. "I think we have the potential to really throw everything at it. I think we have four really strong cards that we can really play the game in terms of tactics. So I don't see any reason why we can't aim for the gold really."

The women's road race will be held on Sunday August 4, and Great Britain has four riders qualified. Though the team has not been named yet, Deignan is cautiously optimistic, insisting, "I'm still capable of big performances".

"Obviously I would have liked to have had a result this spring, but my arm kind of took that opportunity away from me," Deignan says, referring to the broken arm she sustained at the Tour of Flanders at the end of March.

"But my most recent world stage performance was sixth in the World Championships last year. So I think I'm still capable."

Deignan, who rides for the Lidl-Trek WorldTour team, crashed just nine kilometres into the Belgian Classic, coming down with multiple riders but taking the worst of the impact, along with Marlen Reusser of SD Worx, who broke her jaw.

"It was pretty painful," Deignan says. "And there was a lot of work on the turbo, kind of one armed which was pretty uncomfortable, but my physio said they'd never seen anyone straighten their arm as well as I have since. So I think I did come off really well."

Unusually for a rider who has been at the top level for at least 15 years, it was the first bone break of her career – something not lost on her.

"If my husband [former Team Sky rider Phil Deignan] had only broken one bone he'd have been a lot happier – I feel like every time he crashed he broke a bone," she says. "So I've got away with it pretty well so far."

Having built up to top form for the Classics though, it was tough to take, she says: "It was really anti-climatic when you've worked hard all winter… to kind of have that taken away from you is a big thing."

Having been originally all but ruled out of May's Vuelta Femenina, Deignan surprised many by rocking up on the start line in Valencia to win the opening stage team time trial with Lidl-Trek.

There was no corner-cutting in her recovery though, she insists, with her health at the top of the agenda rather than her form for the next race.

"A normal doctor will tell you, you can't do anything for six weeks, and a sports doctor will tell you, maybe you could be on the turbo in a week," she explains.

"I tried to find myself somewhere in the middle of that with my own health at the centre of that, rather than my performance. You're better off in those moments thinking of the long term.

"With experience you realise that there's always another bike race, and whether that's in six weeks or 12 weeks, it doesn't matter as long as you're healthy."

After the Vuelta she rode the RideLondon Classique, followed by the new Tour of Britain Women, where she won the mountains jersey ("I was just having fun, really").

Next up comes the eight-stage Giro d'Italia Women, where the team will support a GC bid by Elisa Longo Borghini, and which Deignan describes as ideal Olympic prep.

"It finishes sort of three weeks out from the Games," she points out, "and obviously, you get that massive load of volume and hard racing, which you can't replicate unless you're doing that race."

If Deignan is indeed present on the start line in Paris on August 4 – and she's at pains throughout our conversation to emphasise it is still an 'if' ("it's selection dependent", she says more than once), she will carry with her a wealth of know-how and experience gained from three previous Olympics at London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo in 2021, including of course that silver medal which she describes as "a massive turning point in my career".

It might be hard to imagine that a rider as successful as Deignan still has anything to learn about bike racing, but this time round, she says she will try to remind herself that the Olympic road race doesn't work like any other.

"Tactic-wise I need to be more awake to the fact that it is different to other races," she says. "The team sizes are smaller, and there's an element of individualism within the teams. So you can't necessarily guarantee a team that should be chasing is going to chase the breakaway." 

Aside from a wealth of experience, Deignan doesn't plan on taking a great deal with her to Paris – no reading material or lucky talismans, she says – but her children (Orla, 5, and Shea, 20 months) are likely to pack her off with a selection of notes and drawings to keep her going, she says. They might even come along to watch with dad, but a decision on that remains selection dependent, she says.

And while the Olympics is of course one of her season's biggest targets, her priority remains with Lidl-Trek, she says – to which end there will be the small matter of the Tour de France Femmes starting eight days after the road race. It remains a major target for the team, so there's unlikely to be too much hanging around and having fun in Paris to follow.

"Obviously for Lidl-Trek, they want the best team on the start line in the Tour de France," she says. "If you're doing the Olympics, then I think it's pretty much a flight home afterwards and a flight out to Amsterdam for the start of the Tour." 

All the same, she intends to enjoy what she predicts will be the final Olympic Games of her career ("I mean, you never know…" she qualifies), and the buzz from simply being there is something that still remains for her.

"You know, initially I wasn't a cyclist when I was growing up – I was a sports fan. I used to watch [gold medal-winning heptathlete] Denise Lewis and think she was just incredible. So, yeah, I'm a huge Olympics fan. And to be amongst that... it's an amazing feeling."

Four-time Olympian or not though, an Olympic rings tattoo is not something on the cards.

"No… I don't think my family wouldn't let me get away with that," she laughs.

Lizzie is an ambassador for Cycleplan, the cycling insurance specialist.