Laura Kenny tears up in emotional interview after clinching her fifth gold medal

Laura Kenny struggled to hold back the tears after winning the fifth Olympic gold medal of her astonishing cycling career.

In tandem with Katie Archibald, the British duo dominated from start to finish, winning the women’s madison event by a scarcely comprehensible 43-point margin.

The stunning victory not only resulted in the 29-year-old becoming the first British woman to win gold medals at three success Games, but, following her silver medal in the team pursuit last week, Kenny is now the most successful female cyclist in Olympic history.

She said: ‘You know what I looked up and we had 60 laps to go and I hadn’t even touched the pedals.

‘We were so conservative. We’ve been doing so much work I feel like we’re going to let our big secret out. But Monica (her coach) is married to Ben who is the Under-23 coach and we’ve done this about five times, just this exact plan and we just ran it and I’ve never felt so confident about a plan in all my life.

‘I just want to say a massive thanks to the Under-23s to be honest and the junior lads because without them we couldn’t have run it, we would’ve been raceless all year.

‘It’s unbelievable. I’m just so glad, I’ve never wanted to win a race so badly in all my life and that was the one. I messaged Jason (Kenny, her husband) this morning and said I feel like my Olympics ends today – that was really our main target.

‘I love the team pursuit but it was giving me fears like I’ve never had before whereas once that was out of the way it’s almost hard to say but I felt relieved because the one race I really wanted to do I knew was coming.’

Kenny maintained her composure throughout her post-race interview until mention was made of her son Albie, who was born four years ago and has been watching his mum’s stellar exploits from back home.

A tearful Kenny added: ‘I’ve never missed him so much and I kept saying to people please don’t talk to me about Albie, but I couldn’t have done it without these girls.

‘It’s so hard leaving him at home and just having Katie there the whole time I feel like I’m racing with a sister and I couldn’t have done it if we didn’t have that relationship.’

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