Lizzie Armitstead's outstanding achievements in 2014 have earned her acclaim from a top cycling publication.

The women's UCI World Cup winner and Commonwealth Games women's road race winner has been named by Cycling Weekly as their British Cyclist of the Year.

The 26-year-old was selected for the way she found a combination between consistency and targeting specific goals.

The Otley ace never looked back after an impressive series of results in the Spring which saw her finish in the top two in the first four rounds of the UCI World Cup.

The flying start enabled Armitstead to become only the second British rider to lift the UCI World Cup – Nicole Cook won it in 2003 and 2006 – and emerge from the shadow of the Dutch star Marianne Vos who beat her to the Olympic Road Race title in London in 2012.

In selecting Armitstead as their top cyclist, Cycling Weekly said: "The 2014 campaign was undoubtedly the most consistent of Armitstead’s career on the road — a year when she moved up to the shoulder of Vos and proved that she could beat her.

"Previously, it had been assumed that Armitstead was a sprinter, but this year her climbing ability came to the fore and she showed she is now a force to be reckoned with in any kind of race.

"Armitstead had the World Cup sewn up before the end of April after winning the Ronde van Drenthe and taking second place in the Trofeo Alfredo Bindo, Tour of Flanders and Flèche Wallonne.

"That runner-up position to Pauline Ferrand-Prevot on the Mur de Huy made people sit up and take note. Her previous best on that incredibly steep climb had been ninth in 2013 when she was well adrift of Vos."

The year had lows too. Illness forced her to pull out during the inaugural Friends Life Women’s Tour and a crash in the closing kilometre of La Course, held on the Champs-Elysées on the final day of the Tour de France, could have jolted her chances of winning the Commonwealth Games road race title, somthing Cycling Weekly described as: "a goal that defined her season."