Coaches of Cycling Legend Lizzie Deignan Announced as Winners of Top Coaching Award
News by UK Coaching
Each of this year’s recipients of UK Coaching’s prestigious Coaching Chain Award played a crucial role in Lizzie Deignan’s journey to the pinnacle of her sport.
Lizzie Deignan is one of the greatest British female cyclists of all time. From earning the first medal for Team GB at London 2012 and becoming the 2015 Road Race World Champion to being the first woman to win the 'triple crown' of women's Monument classics, Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Lizzie’s career has been full of success at the pinnacle of the sport.
Every sports athlete begins at grassroots, and now the coaches who supported her journey along the way are being celebrated with the 2025 UK Coaching ‘Coaching Chain’ Award. The award recognises the importance of progressive, person-centred coaching and the dedicated support invested in athletes throughout their careers.
The award will be presented at the UK Coaching Awards on Thursday 4 December, honouring the coaches whose guidance, expertise, and encouragement helped shape Lizzie into one of the world’s most accomplished and successful cyclists.
The coaches being recognised within Lizzie’s chain are Philip Deignan, Joanna Barber, Phil West and Ina-Yoko Teutenberg.
Joanna Barber, the first link in Lizzie’s coaching chain, was her form teacher throughout her education at Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Otley. She was the driving force behind ensuring Lizzie chased after her newly discovered passion on two wheels, from negotiating deadlines, offering moral support, or telling the occasional white lie about missed homework.
Joanna has loved watching Lizzie’s professional journey, always finding a way to support her, including joining the rest of Otley to celebrate Lizzie’s Olympic silver medal with an open-top bus parade in 2012. She is immensely proud to have played a part in Lizzie’s astonishing career.
As Lizzie began to recognise her natural talent, she started working with Phil West, her first professional cycling coach. Phil began his coaching career with British Cycling, where he served as a talent coach, identifying athletes from outside the sport and helping them transition into cycling.
Recalling her time working with Phil, Lizzie said:
Phil was the perfect person to introduce me to cycling. I didn’t grow up in a cycling family. He went above and beyond in terms of introducing me to the sport and he was able to keep it fun, which was so important.”
Lizzie saw Phil as a mentor as well as a coach, playing a key role in her development.
Lizzie won 43 UCI races in her career, cementing her status as one of the greatest female cyclists of all time. Her final seven years came at Lidl-Trek, where she worked under Directeur Sportif Ina-Yoko Teutenberg. Lizzie raced against the German on more than 100 occasions before entering a coaching relationship that brought exceptional success.
Teutenberg’s appointment at Lidl-Trek was one of the key reasons Lizzie chose the team, and working with an athlete of Lizzie’s calibre was equally appealing to Teutenberg.
“If you work with world-class athletes, you just rise to the occasion,” she said. After Lizzie won La Course by Le Tour de France in 2020, she praised Teutenberg for her experience as one of the world’s best sprinters, with her advice of patience guiding her to victory.
Finally, Lizzie’s most personal coaching relationship was with Philip Deignan. The pair married in September 2016 and have two children together. Philip, an impressive rider himself who spent five years at Team Sky, retired in 2018 and opted for the role of Lizzie’s coach following the birth of their first child.
Their relationship allowed Philip to tailor Lizzie’s training to the realities of family life, including the occasional sleepless night caused by the children. Remarkably, Lizzie won the Tour of Britain in 2019 just nine months after giving birth, which was “an incredibly proud moment” for the whole family.
They loved working together, and Philip admits Lizzie was a “coach’s dream” due to her attitude and natural talent. Their coaching partnership helped her remain competitive at the highest level before retiring earlier this year.
Find out more about this year's Awards by heading to our UK Coaching Awards page.
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