Could GB's golden couple become Sir Jason and Dame Laura?

It’s perhaps the ultimate stag do and hen do abroad; a month before they tie the knot, Laura Trott returns from Rio with two gold medals, taking her career total to four, a record for a British woman, while husband-to-be Jason Kenny won three, joining Sir Chris Hoy as the only Briton with six Olympic golds.

Their success has been accompanied by calls for Kenny to be knighted and Trott to be made a dame in the New Year’s Honours – but there are other candidates from the world of sport, and it’s likely there will be a limited number of gongs awarded at that level.

> Knighthood for Jason Kenny on the cards?

While formally conferred by Her Majesty the Queen, the honours in this case are recommended by the prime minister, and following a non-Olympic year typically two people associated with the world of sport will be made a knight or a dame.

Great Britain’s performance at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games saw four people elevated to that status in the 2013 New Year’s Honours, however, and three of them were from cycling.

Those were Sir Dave Brailsford, engineer of Team GB’s success at home and, four years earlier, Beijing, Sir Bradley Wiggins, who less than a fortnight after becoming the first British rider to win the Tour de France won his fourth Olympic gold medal in the time trial, and Dame Sarah Storey, winner of four Paralympic golds in London, taking her career total to 11, the first four in swimming.

The other knighthood went to Sir Ben Ainslie, who in the London 2012 sailing regatta in Weymouth clinched his fourth Olympic gold medal.

In the post-war era, that has typically been a guarantee of a knighthood – besides Wiggins and Ainslie, Sir Chris Hoy and Matthew Pinsent both received theirs after hitting that mark, although Sir Steve Redgrave was only awarded his following his fifth and final Olympic gold at Sydney in 2000.

Among other contenders for knighthoods must be Mo Farah, who successfully defended his 5,000 and 10,000 metre titles and is also reigning world champion in both events, and Andy Murray, who won men’s single gold for the second Olympics running and also reached three Grand Slam finals this year, taking his second men’s Wimbledon singles title.

Then there’s wheelchair athlete David Weir, who has six Paralympic gold medals to his name and will be looking to add to that title in Rio next month.

The plethora of multiple gold medal winning British Olympians nowadays is a result of the Lottery funding that has been poured into a variety of sports since the nadir of Atlanta 1996, when Redgrave and Pinsent claimed the country’s sole gold medal in the coxless pairs.

It would have been unthinkable back then, but such has been Team GB’s success at Beijing, London and now Rio that we have three-time Olympic gold medallists such as rowers Andy Triggs Hodge and Pete Reed, dressage rider Charlotte Dujardin and team pursuit rider Ed Clancy, who hardly register on the radar of the wider public.

An MBE is de rigueur these days for a first-time Olympic champion – and with success in team events such as the men’s eight in rowing and the women’s hockey, there are more of those than ever before – but it seems the Honours Committee may have a headache unless the rule about how many people associated with sport are able to be made a knight or dame.

Following the country’s most successful Olympic Games in more than a century, and the best ever away from London, it’s perhaps not a bad headache to have.

If Kenny does get a knighthood and Trott is not made a dame, as they will be married, she would be given the honorary title, ‘Lady’ – but if the honours go the other way, while she would be a dame, he would still be plain old ‘mister’.

Ultimately, could age, and the stage they are at in their careers, count against them?

While Hoy, Wiggins, Ainslie, Redgrave, Pinsent and Storey were all in their thirties, both Trott and Kenny are in their twenties and have at least another Olympics in them – while for Farah, it seems Rio will be his last Olympics.