Lizzie Deignan will race the Tour of Britain Women for the final time this June, as the two-time winner prepares to bid farewell in front of home crowds. British Cycling confirmed on Tuesday that the Yorkshire-born rider will return with Lidl-Trek for a celebratory final appearance in Britain’s biggest professional women’s race.
Deignan, a former world champion, has long been a defining figure in the race’s history. She won the event’s predecessor, the Women’s Tour, in 2016 and 2019, and added the mountains jersey last year in what was already being billed as a farewell lap. Now, racing through familiar roads in Yorkshire and into Scotland, she’ll be targeting one last strong showing with a Lidl-Trek squad built for results.
“I’m always happy to race the Tour of Britain Women,” Deignan said. “I have such special memories from this race and over my career I have had a lot of success here. It’s always a different feeling racing in front of home crowds so I hope we see lots of fans out cheering for the women’s peloton over all four days.
“This will be my final Tour of Britain so it will be bittersweet but I am going to be surrounded by some incredible women as part of our Lidl-Trek team so I’m confident we can make it a good week and we will be motivated to achieve some nice results together.”
Riding alongside her will be teammate Anna Henderson, who finished second overall in last year’s edition. The two raced together in Great Britain colours in 2024 but now reunite in Lidl-Trek jerseys with the aim of delivering one final highlight.
“I’m really looking forward to racing the Tour of Britain Women again this year,” said Henderson. “It’s always special to race on home soil, and as a British rider, we don’t have so many opportunities so I will be looking to make the most of this moment and hopefully, we will see lots of enthusiastic British cycling fans out on the roads to support us.”
Also confirmed for the race are a new generation of British stars, including Cat Ferguson and Imogen Wolff. Ferguson, just 19 years old, will lead Movistar and comes into the race off the back of her third career win at the Navarra Women’s Elite Classic – her first victory of the 2025 season after triumphs at the AG Tour de la Semois and Binche-Chimay-Binche last year. She’s yet to win at WorldTour level but has made a strong start to life in the top tier.
Wolff, representing Visma – Lease a Bike, has also had a standout start to her pro career, winning a stage and the youth classification at the Vuelta a Extremadura before making her Spring Classics debut. Both riders raced together at junior level for Shibden Apex RT and now return to their home roads as WorldTour professionals.
Zoe and Elynor Bäckstedt will both start the race for Canyon SRAM zondacrypto and UAE Team ADQ respectively. It will be Zoe’s debut following a top-15 ride at Paris-Roubaix, while Elynor makes her third appearance in the British stage race.
EF Education – Oatly’s Kristen Faulkner, the reigning Olympic road race champion, also joins the start list for what’s shaping up to be a strong field across the four stages. The race gets underway from Dalby Forest on 5 June, before concluding in Glasgow on 8 June after stages in Saltburn-by-the-Sea and Kelso.
