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Elinor Barker has said she will miss Laura Kenny’s “laugh and work ethic” after Britain’s most successful Olympian announced her retirement from cycling on Monday.
Kenny won five Olympic and seven World Championship titles on the track for Great Britain over a decade racing, many of which she spent alongside Barker. The pair were part of the team pursuit squad which won gold at the Rio Olympics in 2016, and silver at the Tokyo Games in 2021.
“I was not totally shocked [by the announcement], but I was a little bit surprised,” she said. “I’m not surprised that she wants to retire, though, she has been at the top of her game for such a long time. I think I was still at school when she raced the London Olympics. It’s a long time to be at the top. I think she said it was a really good time for her, and I think I agree with that.”
“The word iconic is the best way to describe her,” Barker continued. “London doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, but it was so huge, and to have Laura alongside Jo [Rowsell] and Dani [King] as the poster girls for that, they became icons for women’s track cycling.
“It [the success] must have been hard to imagine when she was growing up. That was probably the wider impact she has had, that it’s possible now, and that it’s not too distant a dream now that you can get to that top step and you can become a star.”
“Her laugh, and her work ethic and determination [is what I’ll miss],” Barker continued. “She never, ever stopped, and that’s how I’d describe her.”
Kenny’s first world title came in 2011 in Apeldoorn, and she won Olympic gold medals at London, Rio, and Tokyo.
“It’s been in my head a little while,” Kenny said of her retirement in an interview with the BBC this week. “Just the sacrifices of leaving your children and your family at home is really quite big, and it really is a big decision you have to make” she said.
“It was getting more and more that I was struggling to do that. More people asked me what races was I doing, what training camps was I going on – I didn’t want to go, ultimately, and that’s what it came down to.”
Barker, like Kenny, returned to racing having become a mother.
“When Laura came back from maternity leave, I thought ‘wow, this looks really hard’,” Barker said. “She was doing an amazing job of it, but I didn’t know if it was for me. As soon as I got pregnant, I understood it. I didn’t know I needed that inspiration until I did.
“If Laura, and Sarah [Storey] and Lizzie [Deignan] hadn’t done it, I would never ever think it was possible. I owe an enormous amount to her for that, even if I didn’t realise until I needed it myself.”
Kenny’s impact on women’s track cycling can be seen by the fact that the team is set to be successful, even without its most illustrious member in Paris this summer. Katie Archibald, Barker, Josie Knight and Anna Morris won silver in the team pursuit at the Track Nations Cup in Adelaide in February.
“If you look back on everything, the biggest change is that the pool of talent has increased massively, and that’s due to all the girls that were racing back then and put the sport into the spotlight for us all to see,” Barker said.
“She basically took part in four Olympic cycles, which is a huge amount of time to dedicate to one thing,” she added. “It’s hugely impressive, and I think it’s testament to her commitment.”
