No sleep is worth gold to mum Laura
LAURA KENNY defied another sleepless night to win her second gold
Kenny marked her senior GB medal at the European
debut in Poland by claiming Championships in gold in the team pursuit. Glasgow yesterday, taking “If you’d asked me then if victory in the women’s I’d be a mum with four
Olympic and 12 European elimination race.
gold medals I would have Motherhood and medals do said, ‘No, that’s not the not always mix well and the way my life is going to pan quadruple Olympic champion out’,” said Kenny. “I used was on Saturday night given a to go home if I’d had a bad timely reminder of her priorities session and that was by baby son Albie at the flat she all I would think shares with husband and fellow about, whereas track star Jason Kenny. now I don’t have
“I was up five times last night time to think – and he didn’t actually fall about anything asleep until nine o’clock, the else other than little sod,” said a laughing Kenny Albie.” after seeing off Germany’s Anna Kenny will Knauer in the final head-tohead have a chance to for her 12th career complete a hattrick continental gold. of Glasgow
“But you get used to it. I don’t gold medals even feel like I’ve had a lack of when she sleep any more – I just come in teams up with and get on with it.” Archibald as
It seems the 26-year-old’s new the track work-life balance is serving her programme well, having won her first concludes Glasgow gold on Friday in the tomorrow. team pursuit, with the prospect In the pool, of the madison alongside Scot Adam Katie Archibald to come. Peaty’s new
Her dominant performance 100-metre and her evident enthusiasm breaststroke bodes well for Tokyo 2020, and is world record a position Kenny never thought she would face when she was called up for her first European Championships in 2010.
A late replacement for the injured Joanna Rowsell-Shand, has been adjusted due to a problem with the timing mechanism. Peaty recorded exactly 57 seconds in Saturday’s final. But it will now go into the record books as 57.10 after officials revealed an error affecting the first nine races. The revised time has no effect on his achievement, given the new mark still eclipses Peaty’s previous best of 57.13 set in the Olympic final in Rio in 2016. After six qualifying events today, the athletics programme starts tomorrow in Berlin. In the British team is Jodie Williams, who was born with a winning habit until she stopped to think about it. For five years she won all 151 races she ran. Then she graduated to the senior ranks and the weight of expectation began to break her. “When I was younger everything A SEA of green could not halt an Oranje barrage yesterday as Holland ended Ireland’s memorable, brilliant World Cup campaign with a final rout.
The thumping victory saw Holland, with six different scorers, retain the trophy as they swept to their eighth world title in 14 editions.
But never can there have been a more unlikely World Cup silver medal than the one handed out to Ireland’s band of amateurs in sun-drenched London.
For the record, first-half goals from Lidewij Welten, Kelly Jonker, Kitty van Male and a bullet from Malou Pheninckx left Ireland with an uphill battle. A fifth by Marloes Keetels, shortly after the break and an unstoppable Caia van Maasakker penalty corner added gloss.
Ireland managed to stem the tide in the final two quarters, but the Dutch were in no mood to offer the partisan crowd a consolation goal.
As the hooter sounded, all 11 girls in green on the pitch dropped to their knees. This was now a celebration of their near-miraculous achievements of coming together six weeks out from the World Cup and beating high-ranked, professional opponents.
Captain Katie Mullan was first to surface and then the just happened for me,” Williams said. “I never learnt what struggles were. I kept winning and assumed that was how it would continue.
“It was a big discovery for me that things don’t just happen. I had to learn what rock bottom looked like to gain an appreciation of how hard you have to work to get to the top.”
The 200m runner, 24, who was a world champion at youth and junior levels before being driven to the verge of quitting, comes to Germany having won perhaps her biggest battle of all.
“Every time I took a beating on the track I took it as a personal attack on me as a human being,” Williams said. “It’s no secret I’ve had my injury struggles but actually it’s been more of a mental battle. When I left the juniors everyone just assumed I would win and that really took its toll.
“I was almost doing it out of fear, doing it for others. I didn’t want to let anyone down or have people think I was a failure. It reached a point that I asked myself if I really wanted to continue in the sport.”
But with mental health awareness increasing in British sport, Williams’s voice needs to be heard. “Track is what we do but it is not who we are,” she said. “It’s so important for young athletes to understand that. It takes up a lot of our time, it doesn’t really have an off switch.
“But if you find other interests you can put a bad day on the track down as just that.”