Jason Kenny reckons standing on an Olympic podium is overrated. In fact, it was always his least favourite part of being an athlete. “It’s just a bit awkward, really,” says the man who did it nine times. “You have to suck it up – but it’s like forced fun, you know?”
Apparently Britain’s greatest Olympian is not one for savouring the moment. “Actually my favourite thing was always building up and preparing for the next one. People see that as a negative thing – ‘you never stop and soak it up’. But I don’t really want to soak it up.”
This is why Kenny is sitting in an office at the Manchester velodrome just four days after returning from Paris. The man who took over as British men’s sprint cycling coach two years ago is already back training his squad for the UCI world championships in October. His results there will be keenly scrutinised: more than one eyebrow has been raised at British Cycling’s performance in Paris, where it registered its lowest medal haul in 20 years.
You could say the sport has been a victim of its own success. Team GB still finished with more medals than anyone else in the velodrome; others might regard four bronze, three silver and a gold as a triumph. But for Brits who have lived two golden decades with Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton – not to mention Kenny and his wife Laura – it feels a little like failure.
“We’re trying to bring new people on, to teach new people to win,” Kenny says. He points out that this year’s track team was missing all four champions from Tokyo – he and Laura to retirement, Matt Walls to road cycling, Katie Archibald to a freak injury. “We’ve got a phenomenal team and that was proven by the medals – our goal now has to be to try and flip more of those back into gold.”
There is no sign that Kenny is anxious or disappointed at the results. As an athlete he was famed for his levelheaded approach, and he looks genuinely delighted to be back at the National Cycling Centre, the workplace he often cycles to from his home in Cheshire.
“It isn’t the most pleasant ride in the world, there’s some busy roads and roundabouts to tackle. But I’m a different person if I pedal here than if I sit in my car. If I can bank that hour of exercise each way I feel like I’m winning. And it’s one less car burning a load of dirty oil that your kids are ultimately gonna breathe in.”
It has been three weeks since he spent time with his wife and two sons, even though they, too, were in Paris. Laura – Britain’s greatest female Olympian, now everyone’s favourite BBC sofa guest – had a higher-profile Games than he did. Kenny didn’t realise how well his wife had connected with audiences – “she was good, wasn’t she?” – but then, he’s used to her stealing his thunder. “The whole point of my job is to not have any thunder. I’m in the back, supporting the riders, driving the vans.”
How did they manage childcare while both on constant call? “Well, badly, I suppose,” he says, a little ruefully. “One of our parents came out to help.” Now he’s back home where the animals are demanding his time – two sheep, three alpacas, two dogs, four rabbits and four ducks. Apparently the alpacas look after the dozen chickens – “they chase off any problems, which is quite nice” – and their fleece has provided a rug for the home. “But generally they’re just a money pit.”
On the first day of racing in the Paris velodrome, Laura told BBC viewers that she had never seen her husband look so nervous. And yet both men’s and women’s campaigns got off to a stellar start. There was a first win in the women’s team sprint, and a heroic silver for the men, whose majority‑debutant team raced for gold against the all-conquering Dutch world champions.
Seeing Anna Henderson take silver in the women’s time trial, and Tom Pidcock’s last-gasp victory in the mountain biking, had both helped with morale, says Kenny. “I remember my first Olympics in Beijing, just as we landed Nicole Cooke won on the road, and you just feel like: ‘We’re away now.’” But where in previous Games those early wins presaged a tidal wave of victory, in Paris a lack of experience began to tell.
“I think there was a big high after the team events and that it was quite draining in a way,” Kenny says. “The Olympics is spread out over quite a long time and after the first couple of days you saw people starting to look a little bit tired. That’s something that we potentially missed out on a little bit, with it being a lot of people’s first times.”
Jack Carlin’s fiery tangles in the individual sprint were a source of anxiety – Kenny calls them “hard to watch” – but then the 27‑year‑old is a more emotional rider than his undemonstrative coach ever was. It has taken a while to learn how to work with Carlin, staying “robotically” calm between races, establishing a routine and a language they both understand.
“As a rider I just wanted my coaches to be honest and consistent, but I’ve realised that it’s not that simple,” Kenny says. “What I’ve found challenging is how you can say one thing to five different people and they hear five different things.”
He says he has had to learn to say “no” to his riders – Carlin especially. “We plan to the max, there’s nothing left to chance, but sometimes they’re like: ‘Why are we doing this?’ and I can’t remember. It’s good fun, but it’s important that you’re robust.”
Being “robust” would probably have been a euphemism in previous regimes. The ride‑or‑die approach that leaked out in stories of bullying and harassment has triggered a clear change in direction at British Cycling.
The appointment of nice-guy Kenny – who you struggle to imagine raising his voice to anyone – is consistent with that. It’s also evident in Emma Finucane’s delighted reaction to her two individual bronze medals, despite being tipped for all gold.
You can’t imagine Pendleton proclaiming she felt “on top of the world” after two third‑place finishes. Has the culture of British Cycling edged towards a more Gen Z sensibility, celebrating effort as much as success? “Maybe,” Kenny says. “It’s healthy that people feel they can celebrate other medals, in the context of how you win them. I know when we won silver in Tokyo that felt like the maximum we could achieve, so for us that was success.”
Still, he’s adamant that “everyone’s here to win gold”. “If you go and speak to any of the riders, none of them are dreaming about bronze.” Standing in the track centre still fires his own competitive urges. He misses riding, “every time I come to training, to be honest”, and his favourite part of the job is pushing the riders out onto the track because “you can sort of be part of it”.
He was often seen speaking a few words to Carlin on the start-line, though he’s sceptical about their worth. “I’ve been a rider, I know that in reality the person holding you has a very little effect on the outcome of the race.” Carlin’s goal was three medals from three events, and he was on for it right up to the last lap of the keirin final, when he was caught up in a spectacular crash that wiped out half the field. “I got him a burger afterwards,” says Kenny. “I think that helped him to heal.”
Does Kenny sense disappointment at the final velodrome tally? “I wouldn’t say we’re disappointed. We had someone on every single podium, which I think shows that we are still very, very competitive. So yeah, it is frustrating when you’re so close to so many wins and we only got one on the track. But the fact that we’re still there and pushing hard does fill me with optimism.”
His seven-year-old son Albie is already riding a bike, although, ironically given his parentage, he’s “not mad keen on it”. When Kenny got back from Paris he discovered that his one‑year‑old, Monty, had not only started walking in his absence but “actually, running, pretty much”.
It would need a similarly miraculous development for his male sprinters to topple Roy van den Berg, Harrie Lavreysen, and Jeffrey Hoogland in just two months’ time. The Dutch are, Kenny admits, “a country mile” ahead of the rest of the field.
But he has always been a planner, and his sights are already set on LA. “I think we’ve learned a lot in this last year or so. We’ve taken a good step forward and now we’ve got four years to go and it’s really exciting, the prospect of maximising that four years. I’m excited to close that gap.”
