The win marked the breakthrough she was looking for after a difficult week, which had yielded just one bronze medal in the team pursuit. Kenny was self-deprecating in interviews afterwards, jokingly describing her bike as “going terribly” and calling herself the weak link in the team. He fell well short of the medals in Sunday’s points race, finishing 13th. She overcame all that frustration with an unforgettable display of her resilience, outlasting Scotland’s Neah Evans and holding on for victory. She later revealed that she had taken her losses even harder than she had let on: “I can’t believe it. Honestly, I told Jase [Kenny]”I think this will be my last fight,” she told the BBC. “I saw Adam Peaty and I’m totally thinking[ed] in his interview and I thought, “I’m done. I have lost the spark, training is not so easy. Every day I say “Ah, here we go again”. I’ve been through three Olympic cycles now. Still choosing yourself after all this time was, frankly, a nightmare. I’ve completely lost motivation.” Laura Kenny leads the pack before going on to win the women’s 10k scratch race. Photo: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian “Then last night I texted my new coach, Len, and said ‘No! I’m not giving up on this. I still have one more die. Please, just help me.” Honestly, it couldn’t have been set up any better if I tried.” The year since Kenny won her fifth Olympic gold in Tokyo has been extremely difficult. She suffered a miscarriage last November, then had an ectopic pregnancy in January, which saw her rushed to A&E for emergency surgery. Throughout these trials, on and off the track, she has been extremely open about her state of mind. As he digests the gold medal, he was equally candid, citing Matt Walsh’s horror crash on Sunday, which left him hospitalized, as a source of further doubt. “You see [Matt] Walls, fell like that. It really makes you think, “What am I doing?” I’ve been so lucky throughout my career. I had a broken shoulder and a broken arm,” he said. “You see something like this… I texted Monica [Greenwood, British Cycling’s outgoing women’s endurance podium coach] immediately and said: ‘I’m having a serious crisis of confidence.’ I just didn’t want to be on the track. And whenever I feel that way, I struggle badly. And that happened yesterday. Whereas today I was so upset. I was saying to myself in the bathroom, “I can do this.” This is the 30-year-old’s first gold medal at the Commonwealth Games since 2014. New Zealand’s Michaela Drummond and Canada’s Maggie Coles-Lyster took silver and bronze respectively.
