Dame Laura Kenny has announced her retirement from professional cycling after a glittering career in which she won five Olympic gold medals and seven World Championship titles.
The 31-year-old, who gave birth to her second child in July, had been attempting to make the British team for what would have been her fourth Olympic Games in Paris in this summer, but has now made the decision to step away from the sport.
Kenny first made a name for herself at London 2012, winning both the team pursuit and the omnium at her home games.
She successfully defended both titles four years later in Rio de Janeiro and then won gold and silver at the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021. In the process, she became the most successful female British Olympian of all time.
She told BBC Breakfast on Monday: “I always knew deep down I would know when was the right time. I have had an absolute blast but now is the time to hang up the bike.
“It’s been in my head a little while, the sacrifices of leaving the children and your family at home is really quite big and it is a really big decision to make.
“More and more, I was struggling to do that. More people asking me what races I was doing, what training camps was I going on. I didn’t want to go ultimately and that’s what it came down to.
“I knew the minute I was getting those feelings. Once I said to Jase [her husband, former cyclist Jason Kenny], ‘I don’t think I want to ride a bike anymore’, I started to feel relief.
“I was getting these hesitant feelings. Going on to win another gold medal, as much as I would love to do that, it wasn’t giving me the energy I wanted anymore, it just wasn’t. I wasn’t thinking, ‘I really want to go and win one’, I was thinking, ‘I really want to stay home with the children’.”
Kenny has two children with her husband, who is Britain’s most decorated Olympian of all time. Their son Albie was born seven years ago and a second son Monty arrived last year after she had previously suffered a miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy.
