Jason Kenny: ‘Winning will take care of itself if we do everything right’

“It was only on the back straight on the last lap,” Jason Kenny says as he remembers the moment last year in Tokyo when, in the final of the keirin, he realised that he might be about to win his seventh gold medal and become the most successful British athlete in Olympic history. “I’d come through the bell fully expecting them to catch me and then I hit the back straight and at that point all you want to do is climb off and go home. It hurts that much. But I kept telling myself: ‘It’s a medal, it’s a medal, it’s a medal.’ I was driving, driving, driving because, even if one or two come past me, they might not all catch me. Then, on the home straight, it was like: ‘Oh, it could be a gold medal.’”

Kenny, who is usually such a quiet and undemonstrative man, laughs loudly as we look across the deserted track at the Derby Velodrome. We’re a long way from Tokyo and that defining moment last August when Kenny rode his final race as a competitive cyclist. He is retired now, adjusting to his new role as Team GB’s men’s sprint cycling’s head coach and, on the day we meet, it’s his 34th birthday.

After we consider the surreal coincidence that his birthday – 23 March – is shared with three other British Olympic greats in Chris Hoy, Steve Redgrave and Mo Farah, Kenny points out that Roger Bannister, who broke the four-minute mile, was also born on this very day. It’s a select group led by Kenny with his seven gold and two silver Olympic medals. He shakes his head as he tries to describe his historic victory.

“It was funny, a really strange experience,” Kenny says as, typically, he deflects the magnitude of his achievement. He also reiterates that, despite his new absorption in coaching, there was no strategic masterplan behind his win in the keirin. “I said before the start to my race coach, Jan van Eijden: ‘If they give me a chance should I launch [a breakaway sprint]?’ I was drawn [in lane] one which is a bogey number because you’ve got a target on your back. I was conscious that everyone’s going to be looking back to Harrie [Lavreysen], the Dutch boy. So I was thinking: ‘If everyone is looking that way, should I try and get a gap? Jan was noncommittal: ‘Yeah, maybe.’”

Kenny smiles at his mildly haphazard plan which saw him burst clear of the startled field and open up a quarter-of-a-lap lead on the other five riders. “You’re relying on the split moment when no one actually wants to chase and it was then that I went for it. You need to snap the elastic that is keeping you tied to the group. If you don’t commit, you’re just going to end up giving riders behind you a lot of shelter. So it was full gas, head down and go for it.”

When Kenny finally knew that he was about to win his unexpected seventh gold medal he says: “I was thinking of the Italians celebrating their team pursuit gold because that was a big shock. I saw how buzzing they were and I was like: ‘Yeah, that’s how I feel now! I’m also buzzing.’”

Kenny laughs again but he reverts to his trademark nonchalant shrug when I ask how he and his wife Laura [who also won gold, her fifth in total, and silver in Tokyo] celebrated that night? “We went to the closing ceremony. I didn’t want to go but she insisted because she wanted to carry the flag. I just wanted to go to bed.”

Such a response to glory has always characterised Kenny but he knows he will have to be more flexible when trying to inspire others as a coach. The opportunity to make the transition had been unexpected. “I hummed and hawed [when the head coach role was advertised] and I applied the night before it shut. I speculatively dropped it in because I didn’t know who else had applied. I wasn’t nervous at the interview because I wasn’t that bothered. What’s the worst that could happen? I don’t get offered the coaching job and I just carry on cycling.”

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So there was no slick presentation? “Well, I did do a PowerPoint. My understanding was that you needed one so I had to learn PowerPoint sharpish. But it’s idiot-proof, really, and I gave myself a day and managed to make something. It was about pulling in the best bits from the coaches I’ve had. The best coaches make it really easy for the riders, and they’re really positive and clear. I told them that’s the sort of coach I want to be.”

Kenny believes that British cycling is “at a crossroads” and wants to encourage a culture which is positive and empathetic and built on new foundations. “We’ve obviously had a massive management shift. We had hung onto some performances almost through habit from previous things we’d done. And now in the next couple of Games we’ll be going in with a new way of thinking and a new system, I think it will only be judged, rightly, by whether we bring on more talent and more success.”

How will Kenny measure success? “The easiest way is if you’re stood on top of the podium but I actually think British Cycling has a wider responsibility, particularly around participation, and health and getting kids into sport. Obviously I’m involved in high-performance but that wider responsibility is equally important. My job is to get the lads to the best place they can be but I like to think we can do it in a way that inspires people to ride their bikes. We need to support the club level riders because without them we won’t have the next generation coming through.”

He is also happy to become involved in other projects and he now appears in a Thunderbirds comic strip. It is a light-hearted venture which carries a serious message as a new Thunderbird puppet, based on Kenny, offers young readers tips on how to stay safe on their bike.

Kenny is acutely aware, having raced at the sharp end of elite sport for 13 years, that GB Cycling’s obsession with winning produced an often toxic atmosphere. “You don’t need to worry about winning,” the serial winner argues. “Ultimately, winning will take care of itself if we do everything right. It’s important that we create an atmosphere where people feel comfortable and confident to give it their best shot. If we keep doing the right things then success will come.”

Many Olympic cyclists over the years have stressed that a brutal environment in the velodrome causes pain and unhappiness. “Yes, exactly. Obviously I can relate to how they feel a lot of the time, because I’m not long out of it myself, and it is hard. So yes, we should try and help them as much as we can, and they’re obviously part of this massive network of British Cycling. As a coach you feel like the job is to filter it and get the best support and deliver that to the lads as the last point of the chain.”

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He is likely to do so with a light touch, which will be very different to the abrasive style of coaching epitomised by Shane Sutton, who was one of the key members of staff when Kenny won his first Olympic gold medal in 2008 and resigned as British Cycling’s technical director in April 2016 following allegations of sexism and bullying. The Australian denied the charges.

“I’ll be honest,” Kenny says. “I didn’t really get on with him. But he was a very good coach in lots of ways. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a camp with anyone who’s more motivating in training when he’s in a good mood. But, like everyone, he’s got his flaws. Unfortunately he tripped up over those eventually.”

Has that old-fashioned style of coaching become obsolete? “People respond to different things. I think your job as a coach is to not make someone fit a mould but to mould yourself to fit the person. Some people will respond to a coach being a little firmer, and some will need more of an arm around them. The job of a coach is to get the most out of them, whatever it takes, but you’ve always got to do it from a place of respect and professionalism. With the governing body we’re held, quite rightly, to very high standards and we have to maintain them.”

The GB squad has relocated to Derby, probably until early next year, while repairs are carried out at their usual base at the Manchester Velodrome. Kenny is making the 90-minute commute most training days from his home in Cheshire and, asked if family life has changed now he is no longer an elite athlete, Kenny responds with his familiar mix of a smile and a shrug. “Not really. Maybe I’m slightly more relaxed because I’m not stressing about the next training session. We’re also still eating chocolate when we feel like it. We always did anyway, though. We’ve always been quite relaxed and so life’s pretty much the same.”

Laura, 29, is now the longest-serving and, by far, the most successful member of the GB squad. She is also the first British woman to win gold at three consecutive Olympic Games and, with Charlotte Dujardin, the horse rider, she shares the record for the most medals won by a female GB competitor. If Laura were to reach the podium three times at the Paris Olympics in 2024 she would join her husband as the all-time greatest British Olympian with nine medals. Does he expect Laura, who is more outwardly driven than him, to achieve this staggering feat?

“She’s got the physical capability if she wants it, but you never know with Laura. It’s totally up to her and we don’t really talk about it. It’s obviously a massive commitment and it’s not easy, is it? But if she really wants to, I’m sure she can. No problem. But she’s also a great mum and loves being at home with Albie [their four-year-old son]. But she’s such a fierce competitor – and I’m sure she’ll be as competitive as anyone in Paris.”

Kenny stresses that he is relishing his new role. “It is really good fun, particularly when you’re trackside,” he says as he gestures to the velodrome which, an hour earlier, had been humming with the hypnotic blur and whoosh of riders working together in a train as they flew around the boards. “Sometimes you feel like you’re on your laptop too much, with meetings and paperwork, and then it’s just so nice to shut it and get to the real work – which is with the riders.”

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