Jason Kenny becomes most successful British Olympian in history

AP

Beijing, London, London, Rio, Rio, Rio and now, after a week in which, if we’re honest, that glorious list looked unlikely to grow any longer, Tokyo as well.

At his fourth Games, Jason Kenny had already become Britain’s most successful Olympian, in his words “limping over the line” with a team sprint second that saw him move past Sir Chris Hoy by virtue of having won one more silver medal than his former teammate.

But now the time for caveat is over, no “decorated vs successful” debate, no technicality. Jason Kenny is out on his own, the only British athlete to ever win seven gold medals, the greatest Olympian this country has ever produced.

Only 11 athletes in the history of the summer Games, from any nation, have won more and the names among them - Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Larisa Latynina, Mark Spitz - tell you all you need to know. In British terms, it is those below him - Sir Steve Redgrave, Sir Bradley Wiggins and Hoy - that paint the picture best.

“It is just nice to be compared to those guys. I grew up admiring them all,” he said. “I remember watching Steve Redgrave in the boat race. Winning it by a stroke and stuff. It was absolutely amazing. It is really special to be on the same page as those guys.”

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Jason Kenny’s gamble paid off.
AFP via Getty Images

After that team sprint silver on Tuesday, where Britain set a new Olympic record in the semi-final before being blown away by the peerless Dutch, Kenny had been delighted, believing the team event had been his best chance of nabbing the medal he needed to surpass Hoy, and describing his own performance in the final, where he could not find the legs to get on the back wheel of teammate Jack Carlin after three gruelling rides in two hours, as “rubbish”.

On Friday, it was Carlin who had carried the British flag deepest in the individual competition, taking bronze behind the imperious Dutch pair of Harrie Lavreysen and Jeffrey Hoogland, with Kenny having fallen at the hands of the former the previous evening, his reign as champion coming to a premature, but not particularly surprising end.

“It is special, it has been a really tough week,” Kenny added. “I was really disappointed with my speed. “For whatever reason we have trained really hard and tapered really well but it hasn’t kind of popped out the peak speed I was hoping for. You saw in the sprint, Jack sort of showed the speed that I wanted really!”

The keirin, however, would prove a different beast. The pedal-power might not quite be what it was, but Kenny’s speed-of-thought remains as sharp as ever and he served a reminder of his tactical astuteness with a smart semi-final ride to take victory while young Carlin failed to advance. Even so, what he did in the final was remarkable; bold, brazen and had it not worked so well perhaps even moronic.

Three laps out, Kenny took the derny bike’s exit into the well of the track as the cue to go for home, an all or nothing gamble in the pursuit of one last gold. If Kenny was himself unsure whether he still had the legs to pull it off then his rivals seemed in little doubt that he did not, allowing him to go clear like a jockey riding a 100/1 shot in the Derby, realising too late that he wasn’t coming back as he eventually took gold by more than three-quarters-of-a-second.

“I didn’t really feel like one of the favourites,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been betting on myself personally.

“We just said before the start, if they are asleep should we launch one? When the time came and Matt [Glaetzer, of Australia] left a massive gap, I really didn’t want to go to be honest. I looked and thought, it’s too big an opportunity not to try, so I just launched it and rolled the dice.”

You’d have got a fair old price on it landing on seven.

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