Olympic cycling champions Dame Laura Kenny and her husband Sir Jason Kenny are expecting their second child following a difficult year, which saw Laura suffer an ectopic pregnancy two months after a miscarriage. The couple, whose first child Albie was born in August 2017, announced the news on Laura's Instagram page.
In a candid post, Laura told her followers she was "filled with all kinds of emotions" as she admitted she was "scared every single day". It comes after the 30-year-old had to have one of her fallopian tubes removed following an ectopic pregnancy, a dangerous condition that occurs when an egg implants itself outside the womb, in January last year. She also lost a baby in November 2021.
Posting a photo of herself in a hospital gown to her Instagram Story, she wrote: “A year ago today I was sat in A&E knowing I was really poorly but not knowing what was wrong with me. When I got the news I was having an ectopic pregnancy my world felt like it crumbled. We had already lost our second baby in November and I remember lying there searching for some sort of answers." Laura said she was still heartbroken, adding: "I don’t think it will ever go away."
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She then went on to announce her second pregnancy, posting a picture of four bikes leant up against a fence in a snow-covered field. A bright rainbow could be seen in the sky, a symbol often used to reference a baby that comes after a miscarriage.
She told her followers she felt like she "couldn’t hide away anymore", adding that she was already "starting to show". Opening up about her fears around having another child, she said: "The anxiety I have felt has been unreal. Telling the world means I have to accept we are having another baby and this fills me with all kinds of emotions. I’m scared every single day that I might have to go through the pain of losing another baby."
Laura added: "It makes you feel ungrateful for something you’ve so desperately wanted for the last year. But I also know there are going to be so many people, like I was, seeing my post and wishing I would go away with my happy ending. But I also know, when I was lying in the hospital bed, I was searching for people’s happy endings because it was the only thing giving me any comfort at the time. That maybe, just maybe I would get my happy ending.”
Friends and fans, including fellow Olympic champions, flooded the comments with messages of support. Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill told Laura she was "so happy for you all", while boxer Nicola Adams, who welcomed her first child with girlfriend Ella Baig last year, simply commented a heart emoji. Laura's Team GM teammate Josie Knight commented: "I'm so happy", while Paralympic athlete Dame Sarah Joanne Storey said: "Many congratulations".
Laura won the most recent of her five Olympic gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021, partnering Katie Archibald in the first women’s Madison at an Olympic Games. At the same Games, she won silver in the team pursuit – an event in which team-mate Elinor Barker rode in the first round not realising she was pregnant at the time.
Last year, Laura admitted that the heartbreak of suffering an ectopic pregnancy and losing a baby had led her to consider retiring from cycling. Ahead of her spectacular return to competition at the Commonwealth Games in July, which saw her win gold at the London velodrome, she said in an interview: “I felt like nothing was going our way at all. January was a tipping point, I was at breaking point. Without Jason, I think I’d have just canned everything, just gone, ‘You know what, I can’t even cope with doing any of this (cycling)’. But I grabbed for my safety blanket and decided I needed to ride my bike again."
She added: "For me, that’s what I’ve done for the last 13 years. It feels like a safe place, the obvious thing for me to do when I felt that broken was to go out and ride my bike again. It just started to come back again and once I started, I got back into the rhythm of things."
Laura and Bolton-born Jason, who live near Knutsford in Cheshire, met through their love of cycling and they tied the knot shortly after the 2016 Rio Olympics. Jason retired from racing after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and is now a cycling coach.
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