Lizzie Deignan has announced her immediate retirement from professional cycling, after revealing she is expecting a third child in early 2026.
The Lidl-Trek rider was due to retire at the end of 2025 after her long, successful and groundbreaking career. However, she signalled a " new chapter in the Deignan story" with a photo of a baby's diaper with a date of 'Feb 26' and a heart written on the front.
"The Deignan family is growing," the Lidl-Trek team announced, adding a heart emoticon.
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"Lizzie Deignan and her husband Phil announced today that they are expecting their third child. The former world champion, who announced at the end of last year that 2025 would be her final season, has shared the joyful news that she is expecting her third child, a moment that subsequently marks Deignan’s immediate retirement from the peloton."
Deignan announced her retirement last November after an illustrious career and 19 years at cycling's top level. She had initially hoped to ride the Tour de France Femmes one last time, but her professional palmares will end with an 89th place in the Copenhagen Sprint race in late June. Her final victory came at this year’s Vuelta España Femenina when Lidl-Trek won the team time trial on the opening stage in Barcelona.
"Often people say, ‘Retire on the top.’ But I have no ego or necessity to retire at the top. I’m really happy to go full circle and to have ended my career as somebody that helps other people win bike races again," Deginan said via the Lidl-Trek team.
"I have this life outside of cycling that gives me so much fulfilment and so much love."
Deignan has won 40 races, including Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Strade Bianche and the Tour of Flanders. She also won a rainbow jersey at the World Championships in Richmond, USA in 2015, a Commonwealth title in 2014, and multiple British national titles. She also captured a silver medal at the 2012 London Olympics and was a pioneer in women’s cycling.
Throughout her career, Deignan was a leader and mentor as women's cycling developed and grew. She helped lead the charge for better exposure for women’s cycling and better compensation for the riders.
In 2018, she became one of the first athletes in the sport to show that motherhood and racing are not mutually exclusive. A pause in her career was a rarity in the women’s professional peloton at the time, but after giving birth to her daughter, Orla, Deignan made a successful comeback to professional cycling in 2019. She won the Women’s Tour in her first year back.
She topped the UCI Women’s WorldTour rankings within just 18 months of her comeback before making history as the first female winner of Paris-Roubaix Femmes.
Deignan missed the 2022 racing season to welcome her son, Shea, before returning for a second time in 2023. Her role at Lidl-Trek changed to that of a domestique, but she remained a mentor for everyone in the team and the sport.
