Pizza, an early night then golden couple head off to plan wedding
THEY may have just become Britain’s most successful Olympians, but now Laura Trott and Jason Kenny have an even more momentous adventure up on the road ahead: getting married.
And one day they hope to have children who might also excel on two wheels.
The couple spent the day after their monumental night in the velodrome in Rio giving interviews.
Miss Trott, 24, her plaits removed and long blonde hair washed and loose, giggled her way through, pausing only to look up adoringly at her slightly more stoic fiance.
And how did the golden couple of the Games celebrate their incredible success? With a pizza and an early night – as both were simply too tired to go out after an exhausting five days of competition.
They told of their joy at being able to share their achievements with one
‘It’s not been a bad week’
another – between them, they now have ten gold medals – but also how they hoped being in the limelight wouldn’t change their quiet lives in rural Cheshire.
And the pair revealed the challenges of being an Olympic couple – not least the out-of-control feeling they have when they watch the other compete.
Kenny, 28, left almost immediately, flying home last night to ‘get the dogs’ and ‘get settled at home’.
His fiance spent the night in Rio with her family before flying home today.
Both are equally keen to get back to Sprolo and Pringle, their springer cross poodles, and their £500,000 three-bedroom cottage in picturesque Chelford.
‘I like the quiet life, the fact that we live in the middle of nowhere and walk the dogs in empty fields – that suits me down to the ground,’ Kenny said.
The ‘Bolton Bullet’ is much more reserved than Miss Trott, the 5ft 4in eight stone ‘Pocket Rocket’ who rides with her nails painted in red, white and blue and several earrings in each ear. Their differences are perhaps best illustrated on Twitter, where Kenny has tweeted just 212 times in comparison to Miss Trott’s 3,500 messages.
Miss Trott was on social media within minutes of their triumph on Tuesday night, when she joked about their future children having great genes. Kenny, by contrast, posted just one tweet yesterday morning: ‘Thank you all for the support, and thanks to a great team that put GB cycling way out in front again... not been a bad week has it? he said.
It was somewhat of an understatement: Miss Trott became the first British woman to claim four Olympic gold medals with her win in the omnium, while Kenny equalled the British record haul of Sir Chris Hoy after winning his sixth Olympic gold by scooping the top title in the keirin.
Asked about children yesterday, Miss Trott admitted they had not actually even discussed it.
‘No but I thought I would put it out there – surely they would be the best omnium rider in the world,’ she said.
Before then, they have the pressing concern of their impending wedding.
‘The wedding will be next year, hopefully,’ Miss Trott said. ‘This [Rio 2016] was our one hurdle to get out of the way. I wanted all our focus to be on this [Olympic games].
‘I would hate to think that we had half-committed and then it didn’t happen for us. So this is now out of the way so now we can plan the wedding.’
The couple were keen to keep the details a secret – but said they had chosen a venue.
They became engaged in 2014, when they were sitting on the sofa watching her favourite programme, Eastenders.
Miss Trott rushed over to Kenny after he won his race on Tuesday night and planted a kiss on his lips: the image of the Games so far. ‘I couldn’t understand what she was saying,’
Kenny said. ‘She was just bawling her eyes out. But, yes, it was special and it’s good to share it with people you love.’
His race had been a tense and nervy affair with two false starts and fears he would be disqualified.
But he stayed true to his unbelievable form, and powered across the line first. Earlier that evening, his fiance – small and determined, head down under her huge helmet – had won the final event of the women’s omnium by a considerable margin.
She then had to watch and wait for Kenny. The cameras zoomed in on her panic-stricken face as she waited to find out if he would be disqualified. She said: ‘I was a nervous wreck anyway before it. It’s always much harder watching somebody than it is to do it yourself. You are very much in control.
‘I get so nervous, especially in keirins as well because they are dangerous. That whole side of it freaks me out as well because I don’t want him to get hurt.’
Kenny said he was much more relaxed, having total faith in his team. ‘I was probably the only one who wasn’t nervous,’ he said.
Unbelievably, after their historic evening, Kenny cycled back to the athlete’s village where he and Miss Trott shared a pizza.
He said: ‘I just got on my bike and rolled all the way back to the Olympic village, smiling all the way back.’
Miss Trott added: ‘We didn’t really celebrate. We went and had some pizza, me and Jason. And we literally went to bed at midnight.
‘It hit me when we were having our pizza that I’m actually knackered and Jason had been through exactly the same.’
She says that Kenny was her inspiration. ‘I love the fact that we are here together – there’s always somebody to lean on.
‘For me to be able to go into the room and say to Jason exactly how I’m feeling is really important and something that I guess has been a real help towards winning these gold medals.’
He has revealed how she likes to ‘rant’ at him about things that have upset her, and he is happy to let her.
Back in the UK, the pair admit their lives, which involve training for over eight hours a day, five days a week, are slightly boring.
They do not drink and sometimes even spend their one day a week off on Sunday cycling near their home.
But Miss Trott confessed she could not wait to get back to this and be ‘normal’. She said: ‘I don’t want to think about cycling. I just want to be Laura because I miss out on a lot of things. I want to go ice-skating but because we are athletes we can’t do that because if I twist my ankle it could be the end of my career. So I just want to go out and be normal.
‘I want to walk my dogs. We’ve got a local pub and we have never walked to it. So we want to walk to it. Because now we can do.
‘I don’t know how many Olympics I’ve got in me. People keep asking me that today but I just want to enjoy these two [gold medals] first because I put so much hard work into this.’
As for what the future holds, Kenny added: ‘[I want to] just enjoy this for now. Obviously we are going to get married and go off on honeymoon.’