Lizzie Deignan about her silver Olympic medal experience: "The crowds just roared us on. It was like an eternal tunnel of noise"

Coming into the summer of 2012, Lizzie Deignan was a rising star. The then 23-year-old had already won the first edition of women’s Gent-Wevelgem and was beginning to be talked about as a future one-day specialist of the highest level. However, Deignan tells Cycling Weekly that coming into the Olympic Games, she in fact questioned her right to be there.  

That feeling only really left her as she grabbed a silver medal in the road event. "It changed me because it meant that I no longer had the imposter syndrome of trying to be a professional athlete trying to attain a dream," Deignan says as she recalls her memories of that important day.

"I think the silver medal in the road race was a massive kind of justification, I suppose," she explains. "What's the word I'm looking for? It meant I made the right decision, basically. And it also meant that the potential that I thought I had on the road was real. I had the potential to be there on the hardest day, on the most important day at a home Olympics, competing with the best in the world and the silver medal felt like gold to me."

"The crowds just roared us on. It was like an eternal tunnel of noise," she adds. "It was just the most spectacular experience I've ever had in bike racing. Yeah, in front of the home crowd but specifically in Olympic games where you are in a breakaway of three and you know that you're racing towards a medal."