They were the golden girls whose supreme ride became the forgotten triumph of Super Saturday at London 2012.
When Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, Greg Rutherford and Sir Mo Farah brought home the bullion for Team GB in 44 minutes of dizzying euphoria in the Olympic stadium, another holy trinity had struck gold in the velodrome hours earlier.
Dame Laura Kenny, Dani Rowe and Jo Rowsell-Shand's romp in the women's team pursuit – in world record time – almost became a footnote in one of Britain's greatest sporting days. But as Kenny returns to the 'Pringle' where she won the first of her five Olympic titles on Super Saturday, she has not forgotten a seminal moment in her glittering career.
She goes for Commonwealth Games gold in the women's 25km points race on Sunday, laughing: “It was incredible - Paul McCartney started singing to us, it was unbelievable. I don't care what happened at the athletics – I got my first gold medal on Super Saturday and I was chuffed to bits.”
Ten years on, Kenny has become one of sport's greatest achieving mums, and she has already made a triumphant return of sorts to the Lea Valley VeloPark, where she won bronze in the Birmingham 2022 team pursuit on Friday. Although the medal may not have been a familiar colour in her collection, it was still a remarkable performance after she only returned to training in April after a winter of unimaginable heartache.
After suffering a miscarriage last November, Kenny needed emergency surgery to remove a fallopian tube following an ectopic pregnancy two months later – an ordeal which drove her to the brink of quitting cycling altogether. Now she is eyeing two Commonwealth Games medals in the space of 24 hours, with tomorrow's 10km scratch race also in her sights.
She has already accompanied Josie Knight, Maddie Leech and Sophie Lewis to the podium in the team pursuit, saying: “To be honest, I didn’t even think I was going to be here. If circumstances had been different, I wouldn't have been at these Games. To be able to come here and play a part for these girls is brilliant.
“You are supposed to get better at endurance as you get older, aren’t you, so backing up shouldn’t be a problem. It’s just whether I can get fast enough to win anything.”
At 30, Kenny could still equal her husband Sir Jason's record haul of seven Olympic titles, and these Games have become an unplanned first step on the road to Paris 2024.
By then, the family home could resemble Watership Down after investing in a stoat-proof, fortified hutch for four rabbits named Chicken, Nugget, Ketchup and Brownie by their four-year-old son Albie.
Any guesses what Albie had for tea before he chose those names?
