KING KENNY
Rider becomes Britain’s greatest ever Olympian
As he was hoisted onto the shoulders of two men he had just effectively mugged – a rather touching gesture that left us in no doubt about the esteem in which he is held by his peers – the thought occurred that this could be the last we see of Jason Kenny at an Olympic Games.
If it is, he could hardly have signed off in better style. After an extraordinary race, one described by Sir Chris Hoy as “the best keirin race of all time”, Kenny was crowned Olympic champion for an incredible seventh time yesterday.
The 33-year-old from Bolton, who must surely be one of the most underrated sportsmen in the country, if not the world, surprised his rivals with an outrageous solo attack from three laps out.
Accelerating as soon as the derny bike pulled over, Kenny opened up a couple of bike lengths, then took a glance behind to check what was happening. Noticing that Australia’s Matthew Glaetzer was looking the other way, he simply took off.
By the time the rest of the field cottoned on, it was too late.
Not that Kenny was inclined to make much of it. “When Matt left a massive gap, I really didn’t want to go, to be honest,” he laughed. “I looked and thought, ‘It’s too big an opportunity not to try’, so I just launched it and rolled the dice.
“But I didn’t really feel like one of the favourites. I wouldn’t have been betting on myself. But a massive chance came along, and possibly because they also weren’t seeing me as one of the favourites, maybe it helped give me that opportunity.”
More fool them. If his rivals do not know by now what Kenny is capable of, they never will. This was his seventh Olympic gold, his ninth Games medal in total, and it lifted him clear of Sir Bradley Wiggins as Britain’s most successful Olympian.
More than the number of medals, it is Kenny’s remarkable longevity which makes him a great. Golds at four successive Games puts him in exclusive company alongside Sir Matthew Pinsent, Sir Ben Ainslie and Wiggins, and just one short of Sir Steve Redgrave. “It is just nice to be compared to those guys,” he said. “I grew up admiring them all.”
It was a bittersweet day for the Kenny household, with Laura crashing in her opening omnium disci
pline, the scratch race. Although she battled back to win the tempo race to move into podium contention, she was already “on empty” by then.
“By the time the elimination race came round, I was done,” she said. “I was sat in the chair and thinking, ‘I feel sick, my back is killing me’.”
She was duly eliminated early in proceedings, leaving herself far too much to do in the final points race.
Still, it was not all bad. She got to be GB’S flag-bearer at the closing ceremony. And she insisted she would go home happy with her gold from the Madison and her silver from the team pursuit. “As much as I feel disappointed now, I’m really, really happy. I never thought I’d come away with another gold.” Nor did her husband, seemingly. All week he had looked laboured in his sprints. He had told us his legs were suffering. He had tipped Jack Carlin as “our best bet” for an individual medal. Was he sandbagging? The Izu Velodrome is home to Japan’s famous keirin school. Maybe it was all an elaborate strategy?
No, it was opportunistic. And brilliant. The move had been done before, Kenny himself had tried it a few times before, he said. But never in an Olympic final, with everything on the line. And never successfully.
The question now is whether we will see him race again. Kenny was not about to follow Redgrave’s lead and tell reporters they could shoot him if they saw him near a bike.
“If you had asked me this morning, I’d probably have said ‘yeah, I’m retiring’. But now, I don’t know. I feel pretty good, I might carry on! This morning, in my head, I was 33 and getting slower and you have to think, from a British Cycling point of view, you’d rather back someone who is 20 and getting faster …
“But we will have to wait and see. I’ll take a bit of time. I have not been able to squat for a year or two properly. If I cannot get back to training properly, there is kind of no point.”
Whatever happens, he will always have Izu and the greatest keirin race of all time.
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