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Velodrome domination slips away but Kennys remain Team GB’s golden couple

08-Aug-2021 14:02:01 | The Guardian

Britain did not dominate Tokyo on two wheels as they once did but there is plenty of emerging talent to be excited about

This was never going to be an Olympic Games quite like any other. The bike racing in Tokyo reflected that, and within that bubble so did the fortunes of Great Britain’s cyclists. It was a bizarrely apposite conclusion to a Games that had seen a string of one-off episodes on two wheels, that Laura Kenny’s luck ran out in the cruellest style in the omnium, a discipline that she has made her own since its inception in 2012, while her husband Jason should become Britain’s most-crowned Olympian with a jaw-dropping gold medal in the keirin.

Sir Chris Hoy, the man Jason Kenny deposed as Olympic match sprint champion in 2012 after a fraught selection battle, compared his nemesis to a predatory big cat that spends most of its time asleep in the sun, turning into a ruthless apex predator at the flick of an eyelid. Kenny’s keirin opponents would concur that you cannot give the man a fraction of an iota of a glimpse of an opening.

Related: Jason Kenny’s seventh gold makes him most decorated GB Olympian