Laura Kenny confessed even she had given up hope of her husband Jason rounding off his Tokyo adventure with a gold medal, shortly after the 33-year-old blew a high-class field away to become Britain’s most successful Olympian in history.
Taking a calculated gamble, Kenny made an early move in the final of the men’s keirin and the pack failed to keep pace and were unable to close the gap with Azizulhasni Awang of Malaysia finishing a distant 0.763 seconds behind in second place.
Kenny had been downbeat after his performance in the sprint event earlier in the week and even his wife confessed she’d written off her spouse’s chance of winning the unprecedented seventh gold medal of his astonishing career.
Laura told the BBC: ‘Unbelievable, honestly! The amount of people who came up to me afterwards and were like I’d have counted him out of this and to be honest so would I have.
‘Honestly, speaking to him last night he was like ‘I just want to go home!’ And the obviously when he went I was like ‘he’s only gone and done it’ It’s just typical Jason that.’
Jason, himself, admitted it was a case of ‘now or never’ as he attempted to justify the tactical plan that left his rivals trailing in his wake.
He said: ‘I said if I get a gap and he said very unconvincingly ‘if it is a big one’. The first half a lap I was wondering if it was enough and then I thought it is now or never so I will go for it.
‘I have been racing every race like it is my last, just trying to survive really. I think because I ran every race like it was a final. When I got to the final I was pretty well rehearsed. Once we rolled up in the final, for me it was carry on doing what we have been doing.
‘I couldn’t believe no-one came past, I felt like I was standing still at the end, I was hacking away into the final corner, but just kept telling myself it is a medal. I couldn’t believe it when I crossed the line.’
Laura Kenny, meanwhile, was unable to round off her Games by winning the women’s omnium title for a third time after a crash in the scratch race left her with too big a gap to bridge.
The 28-year-old had, on Friday, become the most decorated female athlete in British history after she claimed gold in the madison alongside Katie Archibald and admitted she was left with little in the tank after that success.
She said: ‘I think to be honest I was done after the madison. You just hit such a high, that really was the race that we targeted we’d put so much work into that and I think because we did win I could just go job done.
‘To then obviously refocus and come back into an omnium where you are on your own as well, it’s not like you’ve got your teammates supporting you, it just wasn’t to be.’
On her future, she added: ‘I literally cannot wait (to go home). I came in earlier and I was like ‘last day’. It feels like a really long two weeks to be honest and it is made worse because obviously Albie (her three-year-old son) is at home.
‘Worlds isn’t that far away is it. I don’t know, I can’t see myself quitting any time soon.’
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