LAND OF THE RIDING
Cycling’s golden couple return as parents but little cheerleader is back in UK
THEY’RE the golden couple of Team GB’s blazing saddles with 10 Olympic medals between them already.
For the first time, they are leaving their three-year-old boy Albie behind to go for gold in the land of the rising sun.
By the time Jason and Laura Kenny return from Tokyo, one of them could be Britain’s greatest Olympian – and Albie, already enjoying BMX sessions for toddlers, will be their greatest cheerleader.
Supermum Laura, who has a 100 per cent record at the Olympics after winning two golds at both London 2012 and in Rio four years ago, planned her balancing act between parenthood and elite athlete after a consulting pentathlon queen Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill.
On Super Saturday in
London, it was Dame Jess who got the party started – and Kenny admitted: “I’m an organiser – I have no worries telling people we need help here, there and everywhere.
“I sat down with Jessica when I was pregnant, and she told me, ‘Make sure you have a timetable, you need to make sure you have everyone planned in exactly when you need them’.
“It came easily. I do actually like organising people, as it happens. They’ve been great, we couldn’t have done it without them.
“Albie is beginning to understand what his mum does for a living. He came back from a balance bike session at the track with his nursery the other day and he said, ‘Mummy, I know what you do at work’.
“I was like: ‘Oh, right?’ and he replied: ‘You ride a bike.’ He knows I have bikes because when I go out, he asks which colour one I’m riding today. It was quite nice, a moment where I thought he’s starting to realise.
“Motherhood has changed my perspective as an athlete because it’s made me a lot more relaxed.
“When I go home now, I just go home to be mum. It’s taken the overthinking out of cycling. I used to want to analyse everything, refreshing my emails for information on the track session we’d just done.
“Now I won’t have the chance to do that until he’s in bed because the minute I walk through the door he’s like, ‘Play with me.’ It’s nice.”
Kenny will be going for three titles in Tokyo – team pursuit, omnium, Madison – and she has been grateful for the extra 12 months’ preparation after two heavy crashes early in 2020, including one that left her with a fractured shoulder and concussion.
Even if she lands the hattrick, she may not even come home as the greatest Olympian in her household, let alone the
most decorated in Britain’s history at the Games.
Husband Jason, who equalled fellow track sprinter Sir Chris Hoy’s record six gold medals in Rio, insists there will be no ‘Steve Redgrave moment’ to mimic the rowing legend’s famous reaction to winning a fourth title in Atlanta.
He said: “If anyone sees me go near a boat, you have my permission to shoot me.”
He has already reversed his decision to retire after Rio and has an enviable record of rising to the big occasion. Cycling’s grapevine suggests the Dutch are the team to beat but Kenny, 33, is energised by the challenge.
He said: “My life has changed and I’m a bit nervous. This is the first time we’ve left Albie, and you can’t just selfishly disappear around the world without it being a logistical nightmare back home.
“But we are really lucky, we have got two full sets of grandparents, and neither of them work that much. It will be harder for me and the missus than it is for him because he will be getting spoilt rotten.
“In Rio I had one of those Redgrave moments. I had no intention of ever carrying on, but here I am.
“I have no plan whatsoever beyond the last day of the Olympics. I might choose to carry on, I might decide I don’t really want to - but I might not have a choice. I might get pushed out of the team.”
And what would it mean to go past Hoy’s record?
He said: “It is just another race. Every gold medal has been special, right back to Beijing. They have all got a story and this one would be no different.
“I don’t really think about records or anything, I just focus on the task and try to put in a performance worthy of being at the sharp end.”