Olympic medallist Jack Carlin announces retirement from track cycling

Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European medallist Jack Carlin has today announced his retirement from track cycling following a decade at the top of the sport.

The cyclist has called time on a glittering career as one of the country’s most successful athletes.

The 28-year-old who has a quartet of Olympic medals to his name, having won a brace in both Tokyo and Paris, announced on Wednesday that he is hanging up his wheels.

Carlin also boasts a trio of Commonwealth Games medals won in Gold Coast and Birmingham.

And with Glasgow 2026 on the horizon, he admits that was an incentive to keep going, but insists the time is right for him to pass on the baton.

Speaking to STV Sport he said: “The decision wasn’t made overnight.

“You have to be 100% and ready to give it your all, and the truth is I’ve not got 100% to give anymore.

“I don’t have the motivation and the desire to do that so I’d be doing a disservice to it and if I lost then and I lost it without giving 100%, then you probably couldn’t look yourself in the eye again.

“So it definitely was a long time coming to make the decision, hence why it has taken so long for it to be announced.

“I’m ready and excited for what the future holds.

“It was a massive incentive to compete at a home Commonwealth Games with a Scotland flag on my back.

“Obviously, 2014 was a real turning point in my career when I sat in the crowd and watched teammates compete, and thought that’s really cool, that’s what I really want to do.

“So yeah, there was obviously that thought, but also as I said before, I’d have to be 100% convinced to go to Glasgow with a Scotland flag on my back.”

Having found track cycling after a football injury, Carlin joined Glasgow Riders where his natural talent quickly blossomed and he never looked back.

After success in the junior ranks, he burst onto the international scene shortly after joining the Great Britain Cycling Team Senior Academy in 2016, where he teamed up with fellow academy riders Ryan Owens and Joe Truman to form a formidable team sprint line-up, winning gold at the 2016 U23 European Championships in Montichiari, Italy.

The trio went on to compete at the elite Europeans later that year, taking a silver medal at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France), a velodrome which would go on to be pivotal in Carlin’s career.

After winning his maiden individual medal at the World Cup level in 2017, Carlin headed to the Gold Coast early in 2018 and won a sensational silver medal in the Sprint, his first of three Commonwealth Games medals.