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Beryl Burton
Born
With almost no women's road racing to enter, the Yorkshire rider built her career in British time trials and on the track, winning the Best All-Rounder competition 25 years running and two world road titles. In 1967 her 12-hour ride beat the men's British record, the result most often used to show what women could do when allowed to race the same distances.
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Marianne Martin
The American won the first Tour de France Féminin in 1984, run on the same days and roads as the final kilometres of the men's stages. The race lasted only a few years in that form, and Martin's win is the starting point for understanding why the women's Tour took until 2022 to return properly.
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Connie Carpenter-Phinney
Born
Carpenter-Phinney won the first women's Olympic road race in Los Angeles in 1984 by a bike throw in the sprint, after earlier competing as a speed skater at the 1972 Winter Olympics. The 1984 race gave women's road cycling its first Olympic platform, and with it national funding in many countries.
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Maria Canins
Born
The Italian cross-country skier turned to cycling in her thirties and won the Tour de France Féminin in 1985 and 1986, as well as Giro titles. Her climbing in the Alps against Jeannie Longo gave the 1980s women's Tour its defining rivalry, and her late start shows how open the sport still was then.
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Jeannie Longo
Born
Longo won the Tour de France Féminin three times (1987 to 1989), Olympic road gold in 1996 and a long run of world titles on road and track, and was still racing at national level into her fifties. Her career spans the whole gap between the first women's Tour and the modern professional era, which makes it a useful thread through this list.
More about Jeannie Longo6
Leontien van Moorsel
Born
Van Moorsel won the Tour Cycliste Féminin twice in the early 1990s, then returned from an eating disorder to win three Olympic golds in Sydney 2000 (road race, time trial and pursuit) and another in 2004, plus the hour record in 2003. Her comeback, and her openness about it, changed how the sport talked about riders' health.
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Nicole Cooke
Born
The Welsh rider won the Giro Donne in 2004, the Grande Boucle twice and, in 2008, both the Olympic road race in Beijing's rain and the world title. She did it in an era of minimal pay and media coverage, and her retirement statement criticising doping and the treatment of women riders made her one of the sport's most important voices.
More about Nicole Cooke8
Emma Pooley
Born
Pooley won Olympic time-trial silver in 2008 and the 2010 world time-trial title as a small, light climber. With Marianne Vos, Kathryn Bertine and Chrissie Wellington she co-founded the Le Tour Entier campaign in 2013, which pushed the Tour organisers into creating La Course in 2014, the first step back towards a women's Tour.
More about Emma Pooley9
Kathryn Bertine
Born
Bertine raced professionally for St Kitts and Nevis and made the documentary Half the Road about inequality in women's cycling. As a co-founder of Le Tour Entier she helped secure La Course in 2014, so her influence on the modern calendar is larger than her race results alone suggest.
More about Kathryn Bertine10
Marianne Vos
Born
Vos is the most decorated rider of the modern era across road, cyclo-cross and track: Olympic road gold in 2012, multiple road world titles and stage wins at the revived Tour de France Femmes. She was also a founder of the Le Tour Entier campaign, using her status as the sport's biggest star to push for a women's Tour.
More about Marianne Vos11
Iris Slappendel
Born
The Dutch rider and designer co-founded The Cyclists' Alliance in 2017, the riders' union that pushed for minimum salaries, maternity provision and better contracts in the women's WorldTour. Her racing career was solid rather than spectacular; her place here comes from shaping the conditions every current professional now races under.
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Lizzie Deignan
Born
Deignan won the 2015 world road title, then returned from the birth of her first child to win Liège in 2020 and the first Paris-Roubaix Femmes in 2021, after Trek-Segafredo had signed her with maternity terms then rare in the sport. Her career is a direct example of how contracts changed what was possible for women riders.
More about Lizzie Deignan13
Anna van der Breggen
Born
Van der Breggen won Olympic road gold in 2016, world road and time-trial titles in 2020 and multiple Giro Rosa titles, then retired in 2021 to become a sports director before returning to racing in 2025. Few riders have shaped the sport from both the saddle and the team car.
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Annemiek van Vleuten
Born
Van Vleuten won the first modern Tour de France Femmes in 2022 at 39, along with the Giro and Vuelta the same year, and world titles on the road and against the clock. She suffered spinal fractures and concussion in a crash while leading the 2016 Olympic road race and came back to dominate, and her long solo attacks set the competitive standard for the new women's Grand Tours.
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Lotte Kopecky
Born
Kopecky won the world road title in 2023 and 2024, two Tours of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and the 2026 Milan-San Remo, and was a key domestique and leader at SD Worx. Raced on a full professional calendar with live television, her career shows what the women's sport now offers a complete one-day rider.
More about Lotte Kopecky16
Demi Vollering
Born
Vollering won the 2023 Tour de France Femmes and has taken Liège three times and the 2026 Tour of Flanders. Her high-profile transfer to FDJ-Suez for 2025 was one of the first big-money moves in women's cycling, a sign of how much the market has changed since the days of Burton and Cooke.
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Kimberley Le Court
Born
Le Court won Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2025, widely reported as the first win by an African rider, man or woman, in one of cycling's monuments. The Mauritian reached the WorldTour from a country with no professional road scene, and her win showed how the expanding women's calendar is opening the sport beyond its European core.
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