[Pauline Ballet/SWpix.com]
Laura Kenny is targeting a fourth Olympic Games next summer in Paris, an opportunity to build on her five gold medals and one silver. However, the topic of discussion in her latest interview, with BBC 5 Live, was not next year's shot at overtaking the trio of cyclists ahead of her in the list of Britain's most successful Olympians (husband Sir Jason Kenny, Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Bradley Wiggins, for anyone taking on the quiz question), but instead pregnancy and the impact being an athlete can have.
Kenny had her first child Albie in 2017, their second arriving in July of this year. However, in November 2021 Kenny suffered a miscarriage and two months later an ectopic pregnancy. Raising awareness of Red-S — a condition which Kenny does not have, but which sees women lose their periods, sometimes experienced by female athletes who may expend more energy in training than can be consumed through their diet — Kenny said she has had "many conversations" with fellow sportswomen who suffer with Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport.
"There are females that have struggled and will struggle to get pregnant because of the lifestyle of being an athlete," she said. "We've all heard of Red-S — being females losing their periods. You're not going to be able to fall pregnant if you haven't got a period.
"It's actually a really unhealthy lifestyle that these females can't have kids and it's actually really sad. I've always consistently had a period but the amount of conversations I've heard of people having Red-S. Red-S is actually really dangerous... these people are giving up lots of things that really deep down they want."
Speaking about her own situation, Kenny said: "I think I realised that when we had the miscarriage and the ectopic, I knew deep down that it would be one hell of a comeback [to return to cycling], obviously delaying it because I still wanted to have another baby.
"I knew that time would be short before the next Olympics and it wasn't about this big fairytale it was about what my heart so desperately wanted and it was to have him. I just wanted another one. It consumed me for a long time because I felt that sense of one, loss and two, this missing piece."