Women's Tour of Britain: Lizzie Armitstead is the main attraction but still feels like a newcomer

 
Broadening horizons: Lizzie Armitstead is thrilled that the profile of women’s cycling is being raised in Britain with the new race today

Lizzie Armitstead should be riding the crest of a wave.

The 25-year-old is coming off the spring of her life but still harbours a sense that she does not quite deserve to be at the top table of cycling.

Not even as she took notable victories in the Omloop van het Hageland or the Ronde van Drenthe World Cup did that feeling change nor when she rode out of her skin to finish second at both the Tour of Flanders and Fleche Wallone.

“It’s been great but I still need to work on the confidence side of things,” she said. “It’s only when I look back on it maybe, perhaps in two weeks when I can look back at the results properly and I can realise I can go forward with confidence.

“I just don’t know what it is, why it is really — I think that’s just me. I suppose I started late in cycling so I still feel like I’m a newcomer, like I’m new on the scene. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to have the doubts — it keeps me enthusiastic and motivated, it keeps me striving.”

Armitstead has very much been in a league of her own in 2014, comfortably topping the World Cup standings with the season of her career to date.

All eyes are on Armitstead this week as the star attraction of the inaugural Women’s Tour which got under way from Oundle to Northampton today. The event was set up by Tour of Britain organisers SweetSpot with a view to putting the women’s version on a par with the men’s.

It is all part of the changing face of women’s cycling, along with La Course, a road race that will take place on the final day of the men’s Tour de France and be televised.

“I’ve got nothing negative to say about the sport right now, which my family and friends will tell you’s a surprise,” she said.

“Women’s cycling feels like it’s on the precipice of something. London 2012 had a massive impact for women’s cycling and Brian Cookson [president of cycling governing body the UCI] has tried to implement changes. The Women’s Tour and the Tour de France stage are finally giving us an audience to perform to.

“In the past, we’d be racing in front of one man and his dog and that’s not very motivating. Okay, we need to be realistic about the improvements and changes but Rome wasn’t built in one day. What I’d say is that it’s very motivating being part of it. In the past, I’d question it — ‘what am I doing?’ — that’s understandable as I say with one man and his dog but things are now changing. I expect some really good crowds this week and, if not, there’ll be enough Armitsteads lining the road in support anyway!”

As for her own expectations this week, she is not entirely sure. The spring classics and the Tour of Flanders in particular were her goals for the first part of 2014 and she is well aware she may not have the legs to go for glory on this particular route.

“I’m holding my form at the moment but I’m at the edge of my peak right now for this part of the season,” she said. “But really I’m here to enjoy it.”

The determined athlete inside Armitstead is such that it certainly won’t be the early season glory ride she might dream of but the reality is she has bigger goals to aspire to this season, namely the Commonwealth Games and the World Championships.

“It’s all about starting again to peak for the Commonwealths and it’s a course that suits me in Glasgow where I won my national title last year,” she said.

Whether the confidence is sufficiently boosted by that point is open to conjecture but there has clearly been a change to Armitstead’s approach judging by her results to date this season. Pinpointing that is not so easy.

“I’ve not trained differently, I don’t feel different but I think it’s just that I took a proper break off at the end of the season,” she said.

“After London 2012 it wasn’t like I was partying but I just didn’t have that time off. That’s been the difference so that when I’ve started training again, I’ve felt fresh and I’ve not got sick. It meant that when it came to our training camp, I felt one of the strongest rather than getting my usual kicking.”

Those training sessions, this entire week, for Armitstead it is all building to just one thing, the 2016 Olympics. By her own admission, “I think about the Olympics every day, every day, it’s what I’m working towards”. The sense is she is very much on the right course.

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