Influence isn’t always loud. It isn’t always about medal counts or watt bombs or the TV moments that get replayed long after the podium is packed away. Sometimes it’s about shaping the entire direction of a sport. And if you look at the last decade of British cycling with any sense of perspective, one rider sits at the heart of almost every major shift in the women’s peloton and, indirectly, the men’s too.

Lizzie Deignan changed what British riders believed was possible. Then she changed what the sport believed was possible. And she did it without ever asking for the spotlight.

Her results alone would put her in the conversation: world champion in Richmond, the inaugural winner of La Course, Tour of Flanders, Liège, Yorkshire, Paris Roubaix. She didn’t just tick off the monuments of the modern women’s calendar. She helped define them.

When La Course first ran, the race felt like a statement rather than a fixture. Deignan treated it like a classic. She raced it aggressively, visibly, in a way that made the event feel serious and established from year one. The same pattern followed at every new milestone the women’s peloton fought for. When a race needed someone to give it credibility, Deignan often ended up being the one to do it.

Her best years coincided with the moment women’s cycling accelerated from afterthought to essential. She wasn’t just a beneficiary. She was one of the riders who dragged it forward. Every time a broadcaster wanted a British voice to explain why the women’s calendar deserved the same attention as the men’s, she articulated it clearly. Every time a team needed proof that investment would pay off, she supplied it with results.

Her influence on the road is obvious. The quieter influence, the cultural one, is bigger.

She stepped away to have a child at a time when very few riders at the top of the sport had done so. Trek didn’t just keep her on the roster. They built around her. When she returned and won Paris Roubaix, it felt like a line drawn under years of unspoken assumptions about motherhood and athletic ceilings. You can’t measure how much confidence that gave riders in the next generation. But you can see the outcome across today’s peloton.

Most riders become role models by accident. Deignan became one by example.

And this is where the comparison with the men becomes interesting. Over the same decade British men’s cycling has been shaped by extraordinary talents, but none have had the same structural impact on their side of the sport. Wiggins changed what a British rider could win. Froome dominated the biggest race in the world. Cavendish rewrote the definition of winning. Thomas anchored an era of Grand Tour consistency. All monumental careers. But none fundamentally altered the direction of men’s cycling itself. They thrived within the system rather than reshaping it.

Deignan helped build the system her successors are now thriving in.

Her influence isn’t about personality or hype or social media presence. It’s the kind of influence that only becomes obvious when you zoom out. The British women’s pipeline is now one of the strongest in the world. Young riders expect to win big races rather than simply qualify for them. Teams invest early because they’ve already seen the return. And the sport itself treats its biggest events as historic rather than experimental.

That shift didn’t happen by accident. It happened because riders like Lizzie Deignan were willing to push at exactly the moment the door was beginning to open.

If influence is measured by the number of riders who walk through that door after you, she stands alone.

See the full Lizzie Deignan range as part of our Best of British collection here