Olympic gold medallist Katy Marchant has announced her retirement from cycling. <\/p>\n
The 33-year-old helped the women’s team sprint trio win Britain’s first Olympic gold in that event at the 2024 Paris Games. <\/p>\n
In the same year, she won World and European titles, to add to an individual sprint bronze medal on her Olympic debut in Rio in 2016.<\/p>\n
Marchant said she considered continuing to the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028 but her 13-year career came to an end with a silver at this summer’s Commonwealth Games.<\/p>\n
“I’ve achieved more than I could ever have dreamed of achieving,” said Marchant.<\/p>\n
“It feels really strange. It’s not been a difficult decision. <\/p>\n
“Don’t get me wrong, there have been moments where I’ve thought, ‘could I just, should I just, what if I just?’ But I know what it takes to push on for another two years.<\/p>\n
“I’m incredibly proud of where I’ve got to and what I’ve done. <\/p>\n
“I just don’t want to make those choices anymore to keep doing what it takes to get to LA.”<\/p>\n
Marchant was a British junior heptathlete who was persuaded to switch to cycling in 2013 after a coach noticed her impressive times on a static bike.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Leeds-born Marchant became the first track sprinter to return to elite competition after becoming a mum. Two years after the birth of her first child, Marchant won Olympic, World and European titles before a crash which required operations on her arm and kept her out of racing for 12 months.<\/p>\n
She returned to the track again in January this year, six months after the birth of her second child, then won Commonwealth silver in the team sprint with Rhianna Parris-Smith and Sophie Capewell in July.<\/p>\n
In the lead-up to the Games, Marchant spoke of her goal to compete at LA 2028, but has now told BBC Breakfast that she is instead looking forward to “a little bit of freedom”.<\/p>\n
“I’m actually enjoying the time at the minute to be able to reflect on my journey – something we don’t do enough when we’re in it,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I’m a farmer’s wife, so there could be a bit of that. I have a small cake business that could grow, there is potential. And I’m addicted to high performance and I absolutely love sports. So that might be my path going forward. But I really, really don’t know.”<\/p>\n
“I had a good work-life balance, but I’ve been enjoying not having to focus on the amount of protein you’re eating every day. I’m feeling a little bit freer.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been able to do the school drop-offs, been able to do the swimming lessons, things like that, things that I haven’t massively been able to do so much.<\/p>\n
“I’m really enjoying just being me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olympic gold medallist Katy Marchant has announced her retirement from cycling. The 33-year-old helped the women’s team sprint…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-908441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}