{"id":908707,"date":"2026-09-28T15:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/908707\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T15:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T15:36:12","slug":"ive-achieved-more-than-i-dreamed-of-britains-katy-marchant-retires-from-elite-cycling-cycling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/908707\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019ve achieved more than I dreamed of\u2019: Britain\u2019s Katy Marchant retires from elite cycling | Cycling"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Olympic gold medallist Katy Marchant has announced her \u00adretirement. The 33-year-old took gold alongside Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell in the women\u2019s team sprint<\/a> at the 2024 Paris Games, the same year she won world and European titles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve achieved more than I could ever have dreamed of achieving,\u201d Marchant said, a few months after stating her goal of racing at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. \u201cIt just feels really strange. It\u2019s not been a difficult decision. Don\u2019t get me wrong, there\u2019s been moments where I\u2019ve thought: \u2018Could I just, should I just, what if I just?\u2019 But I know what it takes to push on for another two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m incredibly proud of where I\u2019ve got to and what I\u2019ve done. I just don\u2019t want to make those choices any more to keep doing what it takes to get to LA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marchant competed in Paris two years after the birth of her first son, Arthur, and in January returned to competition at the British Track Championships six months after the birth of her second son, Walter.<\/p>\n

In the buildup to the \u00adCommonwealth Games, Marchant said she hoped to compete in Los Angeles, but after the Leeds-born rider helped England to secure team sprint silver in Glasgow she changed her mind. \u201cI had a day off after two pretty successful days racing and I just had this funny feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marchant spoke to her husband, Rob, before returning for the final races of the Commonwealth programme, finishing fifth in the Keirin, and then took her time to reach a final decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never wanted to walk away from this sport because I had to, because I felt like I\u2019d overstayed my welcome or physically I wasn\u2019t capable any more. I\u2019ve written the story for the last 13 years and I wanted it to finish it the way I wanted to finish.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team sprint gold in Paris was Marchant\u2019s second Olympic medal after individual sprint bronze on debut in Rio in 2016. As well her titles from 2024, Marchant has two world bronze medals and two European silver medals, also winning team sprint bronze at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.<\/p>\n

While Marchant followed riders such as Dame Laura Kenny, Dame Sarah Storey and Lizzie Deignan in returning to elite racing after becoming a mother, she was the first to do it in track sprinting, which places different demands on the body.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter |Fortnightly<\/p>\n

Sign up to The Hotspot<\/p>\n

A new fortnightly newsletter covering the intersection of sport and the climate crisis<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For several years she was the sole senior women\u2019s sprinter in the Great Britain squad, competing alone in Tokyo, and deserves credit for nurturing her young teammates on their road to glory in Paris. \u201cThere\u2019s a small part of me that\u2019s a little bit sad I\u2019m not going to be part of that any more, but at the same time I carry a lot of pride that I helped build that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m incredibly proud I got to do those things and hopefully pave the way not just for cyclists, but also mums in sport to be able to achieve that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Olympic gold medallist Katy Marchant has announced her \u00adretirement. The 33-year-old took gold alongside Emma Finucane and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-908707","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\/908707","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=908707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}