KATY MARCHANT reckons she can harvest another Olympic medal here in Paris.
The Leeds cyclist, 31, lives with her husband Robert and two-year-old boy Arthur on an arable farm just outside the city.
And before she helps out on this autumn’s harvest, she hopes to secure her own bounty across the Channel.
Marchant, who describes herself as a “country girl”, told SunSport: “The farm has been in Robert’s family for a few generations now.
“It’s definitely a lifestyle. We do love it. It’s something I married into.
And something I have got stuck into. I do it as much as I can now. I like to be involved in the summer when it’s busy.
“We like going on holidays. So, we don’t want too many animals. We have a few dogs. We don’t want cows and pigs. That’s too much upkeep.
“It’s rapeseed, wheat, barley. Lots of straw and hay for horses.
“People think it’s funny that as a female, I come home and jump on a tractor.
“We all put our overalls on and just crack on. It’s just normal life for us. To a lot of people in the city, it’s completely different.
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“I love getting dirty and being in the mud — the dirtier the better.
“When I drive the tractor, it’s slow because it’s big. A lot of the time you’re towing heavy trailers, they have tons and tons of corn in them.
“It’s a massive responsibility. I had lessons on how to drive a tractor.
“But why do I feel more nervous driving a tractor than I do going at 70km/h around a velodrome?”
Marchant divides her time between West Yorkshire and Manchester — the British Cycling HQ — because she is on the World Class Programme, supported by the National Lottery.
She trains at a home gym in the garage on the days she is not trying to negotiate a two-hour round-trip on the M62.
It is why she is lifting weights and squatting better than she has ever done and riding faster than eight years ago.
In Rio, she won bronze in the women’s individual sprint but bombed out in the Keirin quarter-finals in Tokyo.
This time, she will occupy the Position One role in the women’s team sprint at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.
And she will go again in the “carnage” and “organised chaos” of the Keirin where riders are led out by a person on a motorbike.
Her little boy, who loves farm life more than pedalling, will be in the stands cheering on his mummy.
Marchant said: “Robert and my dad came to Rio. They flew out the day before the race.
“They watched three days of racing and then flew home again. My dad was working, Robert had a farm to run. I told the rest of my family: ‘Don’t waste your money and come to Rio, it’s my first Olympics, there’ll be nothing happening here… ’
“And it happened, I got on the podium! Then in Tokyo, they couldn’t come out due to Covid rules. So now they’ll all come.”
Victoria Pendleton, 43, was the last British female sprinter to compete at three successive Olympics between 2004 and 2012.
And Marchant revealed: “In high performance sport, you have to be on your game, it doesn’t allow a lot of time to take your foot off the gas. It’s intense.
“You have got to be resilient and consistent — you might win one in ten bike races and the nine that you lose, you have to bounce back.
“I have had two really strange Olympic cycles. One extra long one before Covid. This one has been shorter and I’ve had Arthur.
“It has been more chaotic and that’s how I like things. It’s a whirlwind. Being on the top of your game for eight to ten years is difficult.”
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Athletics icon Carl Lewis unveiled the new look purple track, which was designed by Italian company Mondo.
It is made of rubber, covers an area of around 17,000 square metres and has been extended from eight to nine lanes.
President of the Paris 2024 Organising Committee Tony Estanguet revealed that the idea was to create a more “joyful and festive” tone to the track.
It will feature three colours, two shades of purple (one lighter, closer to lavender and the other darker) and grey on the outside of the track.
Mondo have seen three hundred world records broken since the Italian company produced the tracks since 1972.
And it is hoped that many more will be broken at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
