Kenny back from ‘breaking point’ to lead home charge

LAURA KENNY is relishing being back at the London velodrome, ten years on from that golden Olympic summer, after a double dose of trauma left the cyclist at ‘breaking point’ and ready to give up the sport. The five-time Olympic champion revealed in April that, after becoming pregnant following last summer’s Tokyo Games, she miscarried in November. She then suffered an ectopic pregnancy in January. ‘January was an absolute tipping point, I was at breaking point,’ said Kenny, who is married to cyclist-turned-coach Jason Kenny. ‘I think without Jason I’d have just canned everything. I’d have said: “I can’t even cope with doing any of this any more”.’ Instead she reached for the bike. ‘People think I’m mental,’ Kenny said yesterday. ‘But for me that’s home… it feels like a safe place. So the obvious thing for me to do when I felt that sad was to ride my bike again.’ The 30-year-old added: ‘It made us realise: cycling is one thing but life is another. It really did make me think: “Why am I doing this?” I enjoy it and that’s why I’m doing it. I think It made me realise that more than ever.’ Britain’s most successful female Olympian will compete for England in the team pursuit, scratch, and points race at the Commonwealth Games, which begin this week in Birmingham. The track cycling is in London, at the venue where she won two golds in 2012. ‘I’m just glad to be here,’ she said. Kenny is renting an Airbnb which ten years ago formed part of the athletes’ village. ‘I walked in and thought: “Wow, I’m having serious deja vu”, like I’d been in this flat before. Then I realised, of course I had,’ she recalled. Kenny had her first session back on the London track yesterday. ‘We’ve got Ernie and Mark — our two mechanics who were at London — and we’re even sitting in the same bit of the velodrome, so we were having a right old reminisce,’ she said. ‘I just love it here, even the smell brings back memories. It’s my favourite track and it’s always going to be.’