LIZZIE Armitstead is no-nonsense and uncompromising, both on and off the bike.

She may be based amid the glitz and glamour of Monaco and a friend and training partner of Formula One drivers, but she is full of Yorkshire grit.

The 27-year-old from Otley is a self-coached vegetarian who used her silver medal – the first British medal of the London 2012 Olympics - to raise the uncomfortable truth of gender inequality in cycling and wider sport.

Some suggested when she crossed the line on The Mall behind Marianne Vos after a two-rider sprint that she was smiling. It was anything but, it was a grimace.

She will be wincing now, with relief. She will also be kicking herself that she allowed her Olympic dream to be jeopardised by three 'failures' pertaining to the whereabouts system which helps ensure clean sport.

Armitstead is a fervent anti-doping supporter. She has been outspoken about drug cheats in cycling.

It will hurt that many are questioning her. She was facing a two-year ban, only for the Court of Arbitration for Sport to scrub the first whereabouts 'failure' from her record on appeal.

She will compete in Sunday's Olympic road race, hoping to upgrade the silver from four years ago, but awkward questions linger as to how and why an athlete so intelligent, savvy and committed can have found herself in this position.

Armitstead was discovered by British Cycling's Jonny Clay on a visit to Prince Henry's Grammar School in Otley in 2003.

She had been teased by a boy in her year, but, in a series of tests on the school playing field beat her adversary. Further assessments followed before she was inducted on to the regional talent team at the start of her progression to world, Commonwealth and Olympic medals.

She was a member of the British team which helped then Olympic champion Nicole Cooke win the world title in September 2008.

But she rose to international prominence by winning three medals, including team pursuit gold, at the 2009 Track World Championships in Pruszkow, Poland.

She picked herself up off the track to claim silver in the scratch race following a late crash and claimed bronze in the points race.

Silver in the Commonwealth Games road race in Delhi in 2010 – upgraded to gold in Glasgow four years later - followed.

In the intervening period came her silver in London, plus an unsavoury public spat with Cooke in the lead-up.

Armitstead had felt Cooke had not fulfilled her role as a support rider at the previous year's World Championships and the Welsh rider reluctantly did so at the Olympics.

Armitstead, World Cup series winner in 2014 and 2015, long coveted the rainbow jersey of world champion on the road and she won it in Richmond, the United States, last September.

She has described the scrutiny with being world champion as a "burden", but has debunked as a myth the 'curse of the rainbow jersey'.

She won prestigious one-day races Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Strade Bianche and the Tour of Flanders in early 2016 and June's Aviva Women's Tour in Britain.

She marries boyfriend Philip Deignan, an Irish Team Sky rider, in September and anticipates this year to be one of the best summers of her life.

Victory on Sunday in the heat of Rio will certainly play its part.