Scottish Olympic hero retires at 28 after moment of realisation - 'old me wouldn’t have done that'

The 28-year-old Scot, who took team sprint silver and individual sprint bronze in both the Tokyo and Paris Games, took time out to go travelling after last summer’s Olympics but had stopped at a gym to do some weights and keep himself ticking over.

“I was just doing a clean in the gym and the thing slipped out of my hands and I dropped it,” Carlin recalled. “I just looked at it and thought, ‘I don’t need to do this right now’. I don’t think I even unracked the weight. I picked up my bag and left.

“That was one point where the cog started turning going, ‘Do I really have this?’ Because the old Jack wouldn’t have done that.”

In an era of men’s track sprinting when the dominance of Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen, a five-time Olympic champion and 16-time world champion, has left others fighting for second, Carlin has added five world championship medals and six European medals to his Olympic haul.

But he knows that in a sport decided by the finest of margins, the moment he lost even a fraction of his motivation it was time to announce his retirement – despite the temptation to do one more year and bow out at next summer’s Commonwealth Games on home boards in Glasgow.

“You can win or lose things by thousands of a second,” he said. “If I wasn’t going to give it that 100 per cent, which I can’t, I don’t feel I have that to give, I don’t think it’s worth doing.

“I think I’d be doing myself a disservice, the people around me a disservice, but also the jersey a disservice.”

Carlin only took up cycling as a teenager but quickly fell in love, recalling how he sold his X-box console to buy rollers for training, while his parents once sold a car to buy new wheels for his bike as his potential became clear.

Fellow Scot Sir Chris Hoy, the six-time Olympic champion, was a key inspiration as Carlin honed his skills on the velodrome named in Hoy’s honour in Glasgow, before joining Great Britain’s academy in 2016.

In the postponed Tokyo Games in 2021 Carlin won team pursuit silver alongside Sir Jason Kenny and Ryan Owens before his individual bronze. Three years later, he overcame a broken ankle suffered only three months before the Paris Olympics to repeat both results.

“Part of the decision is that I am content, truly happy with my career,” Carlin added. “It’s been 10 years in the high performance world within British Cycling.

“I’ve achieved so much and I’m content with that. What else is there to chase when I’ve not got 100 per cent to give it anymore?”