Laura Kenny (Retired)

Dame Laura Kenny is one of the most recognised sportswomen on the planet and Britain’s greatest ever female Olympian, having won a total of 6 medals, including 5 Gold, across three Games in London, Rio and Tokyo.

The triple-Olympic champion was born a month prematurely with a collapsed lung and later diagnosed with asthma. Advised to try sport to help with her breathing, Kenny first participated in trampolining before being forced to stop due to an undiagnosed condition that caused her to sporadically pass out.

At London 2012, Laura, Joanna Rowsell Shand and Dani King broke the world record each time they rode on their way to the team pursuit gold and two days later, Kenny won the omnium by the closest possible margin of one point with a storming time trial to get the gold.

At the Rio Olympics in 2016, she helped GB win the women’s team pursuit and also defended her omnium title.

After injury hit preparations, Laura won Silver in the Team Pursuit in at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in Summer 2021. Later in the Games, Laura and teammate Katie Archibald subsequently went on to become the first Olympic champions in the women’s Madison in a dominant performance. The win made her the first British woman to win Golds at three consecutive Olympics, the most successful female cyclist in Olympic history and tied her with Charlotte Dujardin for the most Olympic medals won by a British female sportsperson.