Laura Kenny, Britain’s most successful female Olympic athlete, has announced her retirement from cycling. The 31-year-old has won five Olympic gold medals and had been aiming to compete at the Paris Games this summer, but told the BBC of her decision to end a stellar career.
Kenny said her priority is to spend time with her two children and her husband, Jason, who is Britain’s most decorated Olympian. She gave birth to their first son, Albie, in 2017, but contemplated retirement in 2021 after a miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. The couple’s second son, Monty, was born last year.
The announcement brings an end to a remarkable career in cycling which sprung from such inauspicious circumstances, being born premature, with a collapsed lung, and only taking up the sport as a child after her parents were advised to try to increase her lung capacity.
Kenny told Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on Monday the complications involved in her attempt to have a second child played a bigger part in the decision than had been evident to her at the time. “I was quite open about having a miscarriage and the ectopic [pregnancy],” she said. “I think maybe that had more of a thing to play in it than I’d ever kind of realised or anticipated.
“All I ever wanted for Albie was a sibling. I just always saw Albie as a big brother ... Then once [Monty] was here and I did have another baby, I just didn’t want to waste that time.”
Kenny revealed to the BBC that the sacrifices involved in competing while her two young boys were at home had convinced her this was the right time to quit.
“It’s a relief to be honest,” she said. “I’ve had the thoughts for a little while but I only made the decision 10 days ago. Now it’s out I can talk about it and it’s quite nice.
“I just kept getting this horrible feeling in my tummy like: ‘You don’t want to go there so why are you leaving the children to go there?’ And I thought: ‘No, I don’t want to be riding my bike any more. I’m just doing it because it’s all I’ve ever known.’ And so when I started getting these gut-wrenching feelings I thought: ‘That’s it. Decision made for me.’”
Kenny also explained that having her second child had made her reassess her priorities, stating: ‘[Monty] is eight months old tomorrow. I mean, I don’t know where that’s gone – and I’ve been there with him every step.
“Maybe I can now sit here and say I took Albie for granted a little bit – how easy it was to have Albie. How easy everything seemed at the time. I would just ask my parents to come and look after him. Whereas this time I just didn’t want to. I wanted that to be me. I didn’t want to miss anything.”
In response to being asked about comments last week from Lily Allen, who said having two children had “totally ruined” her music career, Kenny said: “I actually got asked this the other day; someone said to me was it worth it? Can you do both? Can you have everything?
Laura Kenny and her husband, Jason, pose with their gold medals at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP
“And I would say you can yeah, and I could’ve got back on the bike and I could’ve possibly qualified for the next Olympics but you’ve got to think if it’s worth it. Because in the long run it’s your happiness that you’re toying with here – and it was mayhem.
“Taking Albie around the world and travelling around the world with him and qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics was absolute carnage.”
Kenny rose to prominence during the 2012 London Olympics, when she won gold in the team pursuit and the omnium, before repeating the double success at the Rio Games in 2016. At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, which were delayed a year by the Covid pandemic, Kenny claimed team pursuit silver and gold with Katie Archibald in the women’s madison.
She is a seven-times world champion and 14-times European champion, won two Commonwealth Games titles and was British National Road Race champion in 2014.
Kenny career - in numbers
Show5 - Laura Kenny won five Olympic golds and is the first British woman to claim titles in three consecutive Games with success in 2012, 2016 and 2020. She won six Olympic medals in all.
12 - The combined haul of Olympic golds for Laura and husband Sir Jason.
67 - Kenny also had seven world titles and 14 European titles as part of a career haul of 67 medals across the Olympics, world championships, European championships, UCI World Cups and Commonwealth Games, with 47 of them gold.
11 - Kenny has been central to Britain's success in the women's team pursuit during her career, and was part of teams that broke the world record on 11 different occasions between 2012 and 2016.
78 - The points scored by Kenny and Katie Archibald as they won the madison race at Tokyo 2020, the first time it had been part of the women's competition at an Olympics. They had more than twice as many points as second-placed Denmark, who finished on 35.
The Great Britain team performance director, Stephen Park, paid tribute to Kenny, saying: “Laura hangs up her wheels as not just one of the sport’s greatest riders, but as one of the greatest sporting talents our country has ever produced.”
This month, Park said that Kenny had only a “slim chance” of competing at this summer’s Olympics “in a team that’s more competitive than it’s ever been”.
Kenny was made a dame in the 2021 new year honours, hopes to be at this summer’s Paris Olympics in some capacity and wants to remain involved with Great Britain’s cycling team.
“There’s nothing set in stone but there are things I’m so interested in doing,” she said. “Something to help the younger generation, whether that could be some kind of academy. I could never be a coach because that’s just too much pressure for me, but maybe something in the background that would help the youngsters have the opportunities I had.”
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