Dame Laura Kenny confirms plans to compete at 2024 Olympics one year after giving birth

First lady of cycling Dame Laura Kenny has confirmed she will go for Olympic gold in Paris next year, admitting: “I know everyone thinks I'm absolutely mad.”

Supermum Dame Laura only gave birth to her second child, Montgomery, last July and to reach the top of the podium again just 12 months later would be a stupendous feat. But the five-times Olympic champion, whose last crock of bullion was her Madison double act with Katie Archibald in Tokyo, will hit the comeback trail at the European Championships in Apeldoorn from January 10-14.

Her husband, sprint king Sir Jason Kenny, retired after winning a British record seven Olympic titles but, speaking for the first time about her plans for 2024, she said: “I obviously want to compete in the next Olympics. I hope both children see their mum as someone who was determined to make both things work.

“They will never have the burden of thinking, ‘Oh well, mum had me and then ended her career.' Because I didn’t. I carried on. I made it work. I hope that they look back and they can see that and see that from the day they were born, they were part of the journey.

“For me now, basically it’s rehab. It’s as if I have been injured and we have a process that I go through. Slow and steady at the minute. I cannot rush this, I cannot push this on too fast. It can be hard at times.

“I know everyone thinks that I’m absolutely mad in saying that but if I don’t try, I’ll never know. But I would hate to be sat here thinking: ‘Well, I never even gave it a go to see whether I could make it possible.”

Kenny will be 32 by the time the Paris 2024 Games come round, suffered a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy before the safe arrival of a brother for first-born Albie. On the Team GB and Toyota documentary series The Journey, she revealed: “Having the ectopic was way worse than the miscarriage.

“It all happened so fast. I went to hospital thinking I had severe Covid and left just like: ‘What the hell?’

“Having had a major operation, when I didn’t even know I was pregnant, was all terrifying really. I struggled massively mentally after everything that we went through and I’d say I probably wasn’t truly happy until I fell pregnant with Monty.

“You are living a life in the public eye. Obviously we had the Commonwealth Games. And I had to pretend that everything was okay, but the two different comebacks between Albie and Monty have been so different.

“With Albie I came back feeling like I had a point to prove, that you could be a mum and be an Olympic champion all at the same time. I think this time, I’ve come back for me. I’ve come back very much because I love riding my bike and I cannot imagine it not being part of my life.”