'It's a relief': Britain's most successful female Olympian Laura Kenny says it is time to quit

Laura Kenny, Britain's most successful female Olympic athlete, yesterday announced her retirement from cycling. The 31-year-old won five Olympic golds and had been aiming to compete at the Paris Games this summer, but told the BBC of her decision to end an extraordinary career.

- Tony Paley

Kenny said her priority was 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 that sprang from inauspicious circumstances. She was born premature, with a collapsed lung, and only took 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 yesterday 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.