“Never felt so lost”
Olympic champion Kenny reports miscarriage
4/22/2022, 6:32 p.m
At the Tokyo Games, Laura Kenny was crowned the most successful Olympian in British sports history. But then a tragic time begins for them. The triumph is followed by a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy. Now the 29-year-old describes her way back into the sport.
The most successful British track cyclist Laura Kenny has had a difficult time: After the Olympic Games last year, the 29-year-old suffered a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy, as she announced on her Instagram account. She became pregnant immediately after the Tokyo Olympics, but lost the baby in November when she was nine weeks pregnant.
“I’ve never felt so lost and sad. It felt like a part of me had been torn away,” Kenny continued on Instagram. The second setback came in January: The five-time Olympic champion had contracted Covid-19 and continued to feel bad after the illness – an ectopic pregnancy had been diagnosed. She had to have an operation.
“Fear isn’t nearly the right word. I lost a fallopian tube that day. I’ve always known I was tough, but sometimes life pushes you to an unbearable limit,” Kenny wrote. The 29-year-old is married to teammate Jason Kenny, 34, and the couple have a son. Without these two, she continues, she probably would not have survived this time.
Together with Katie Archibald, Kenny had won gold in Tokyo in the Madison discipline, a two-man race. For the exceptional athlete it was the fifth Olympic gold medal after successes in team pursuit and omnium at the 2012 London and 2016 Rio de Janeiro games. This makes her the most successful female cyclist and most successful British woman in Olympic history.
Along with her husband, who also holds the same records in men’s competitions, Kenny is also the most successful married couple at the Olympics, with each partner having won at least one gold. Together they come to twelve times gold and three times silver. Laura Kenny is currently starting at the Nations Cup in Glasgow – from where she has now made her difficult way back to competitive sports public.