Queen of the track Dame Laura Kenny won a Commonwealth Games bronze medal on her comeback from a winter of heartache and giggled: “I was the weakest link.”
Kenny only returned to the saddle in April after suffering a miscarriage last November and an ectopic pregnancy two months later.
Earlier this week, she revealed the devastating double setback almost made her quit cycling – but as she led England's team pursuit quartet to the podium, she admitted: “I've never felt so much pressure to win a bronze medal in my career.” As a five-times Olympic champion, Kenny is one in a bullion.
But the value of a bronze medal behind Australia and New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games was incalculable therapy after her double trauma. Unbelievably, at 30 she is now the matriarch of women's endurance races, but Kenny was still leader of the pack as 25-year-old Josie Knight, Maddie Leech, 19, and Sophie Lewis, 20, followed her home in the 'Pringle' velodrome on the London 2012 Olympic park.
She said: “This is such a young team, and obviously I’ve been really lucky in my career that I’ve had some brilliant experiences and I’ve been able to step up on that podium, and this is their first taste of it. You want to help them win and have a taste of the medals that I have had in the past. I felt a real sense of pressure.
“I was so nervous it could have been a gold medal ride at the Olympics, but being able to ride with these youngsters, they bring a completely different, fresh, enjoyable environment. I was going terribly. I think I was the weak link to be honest – but I’ll take that. At some point you’ve got to hand it over to the next generation. Don't ask them what they were doing in 2012 – they will make me feel like a granny.”
Kenny was helped to the start line by her husband and seven-times Olympic champion, Sir Jason, but she laughed: “I just pretended he wasn’t there. He might as well not be there for all I care!”f And the couple's four-year-old son Albie, who has been staying with Dame Laura in her apartment – the same block of the athletes' village where she stayed during London 2012 – was out on the town with grandparents.
“He was too busy in the London Transport Museum for me,” said Kenny.
And her chances of glory in the points and scratch races, where she will fly the Cross of St George on Sunday and on Monday? “Oh, slim to none,” she replied. “Like I say at the Olympics, I just turn up and hope for the best. So I’ll turn up and hope for the best.”
On a day of near misses for England, the team pursuit brotherhood – Daniel Bigham, Charlie Tanfield, Ethan Vernon and Oliver Wood – took silver behind New Zealand. And in the team sprint, it was silver again for Ryan Owens, Hamish Turnbull and Joe Truman as Australia romped home by more than a second in the final.
But Neil Fachie claimed a fifth Commonwealth gold in the men's tandem B 1km time trial, making him the joint most-decorated Scottish athlete at the Games along with lawn bowler Alex Marshall.
Fachie needed a Games record 59.93sec to edge out James Ball (Wales) by 0.11sec, with England's Stephen Bate a distant third.
