Lizzie Deignan woken from sleep to dance with male Team GB rider
Lizzie Deignan wins the Worlds in 2015; she has told some very worrying stories about inside the Team GB camp.
Former world road race champion Lizzie Deignan has revealed a number of sexist incidents she was the victim of in the Team GB camp.
Deignan, who has taken the name of her Irish husband Philip Deignan, has recounted one particularly worrying incident in her new book.
Aged 19 years at the time, she says she was in bed one night in a team hotel when she heard a knock on the door at 11.30pm.
She answered to find the manager of a, male, team who told her to go down stairs to the bar where an impromptu party was underway for a male rider.
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Deignan, formerly Armistead, said she was “left with no choice” but to take part in a Wii dance game where those playing follow the dance moves of the game.
She was the only woman present and danced in the game with the male rider while the others looked on.
It was only when she reflected later that she realised how inappropriate it was.
“It was only later when I really thought about it, I thought, ‘No, that wasn’t a laugh.”
She also recounted other incidents including the women on the Team GB squad being forced to borrow helmets off the male riders.
And they were told they would be banned from the team if the helmets weren’t returned.
In 2015 when she won the world title in Richmond she said her Team GB coach was not present at the finish for her triumph.
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Instead he had gone to look after the male junior team having decided to prioritise them on the day.
Deignan was the subject of controversy last year when she was initially found to have recorded three missed dope tests, which results in a ban.
However, when facing being banned she appealed the first incident. It was found that the tester had not made proper efforts to find her in the team hotel in Sweden.
And when that was removed from her record only two missed tests stood and she was not banned.
She said of that time that she should have sought more help from people around her offering support.
And she revealed because her father in law was ill in Ireland she had gone there at the last minute. She had failed to change her whereabouts files with the change of location.
It was when in Ireland that the third "missed" test arose.
One of those critical of her at the time, Bradley Wiggins, said there was no excuse for missing three tests.
However, he has since become embroiled in his own controversies. Those centre on the TUEs he availed of for corticosteroids three years in a row.
And he has also been under pressure over a jiffy bag delivered to him in France in 2011.
Team Sky and British Cycling have said the bag contained an over the counter decongestant. But neither has been able to produce records to prove it.
Deignan wondered if the public was now more sceptical of Wiggins than British cycling as whole.
“I don’t know if people are suspicious of cycling or more specifically of Bradley,” she said.
“It’s heartbreaking if they are, because there have been so many success stories.”
Steadfast: My Autobiography By Lizzie Armitstead is published on April 20th.
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