IF someone encourages Katie Archibald to break a leg at her home European Championships this week she might be forgiven for taking it the wrong way. The broken collarbone sustained by the Scottish track cyclist in a crash on the Tour de Yorkshire shortly after the Commonwealth Games is healing nicely. It is more the rib injury which she acquired in her first race after her return which is the problem. Not to mention the back complaint she now has following a further crash only last week.
Lord knows injuries are part of the cyclist’s daily existence but all in all this 24-year-old, who jeopardised her participation at the Rio Olympics by damaging a cruciate ligament in her knee in a high-speed motorbike crash in late 2015, has been through the wringer. So much so, Archibald jokes, that for once, her dad Ian even started to sympathise.
“Cycling is a terrible sport for that,” says Archibald. “You think the amount of competitions that are hampered by people crashing or injuries and you always wonder is there continuity in who’s the best in the world because so often the best in the world has a broken wrist. Liam Philips [the British BMX racer] has broken his arms close to double digits, the BMXers are in that room all the time.
“It was my right collarbone but my left ribs,” said Archibald, “so I’ve been lying in bed on my back just thinking ‘I’ll learn to sleep like this I guess’. At least my dad’s done his collar bone and ribs, so while he’s not a really sympathetic person this was the one occasion cause it’s happened to him he was willing to sympathise. It makes you grumpy but shouldn’t necessarily make you slow. I feel good injury wise now, now it’s just down to legs.”
While the fine details of her week were still being thrashed out last night, Archibald will need those legs in the next few days alright. Coming into the event as a 10-time European Champion, as of last night Archibald and her coach Paul Manning were pondering passing up on the chance to defend her individual pursuit crown, won in Berlin least year. The reasoning is simple enough: while it is an event she destroyed the field to take Gold Coast gold in only a few months back, it is no longer on the Olympic roster for Tokyo and she needs to prioritise those events, with only one British rider, or crew, entering each event.
She will, however, defend her omnium title against the formidable challenge of Kirsten Wild of the Netherlands and join hands, literally, with Laura Kenny in a high-powered GB team for the Madison, the event where riders whirl themselves around the track in tandem. First, though, comes the team pursuit, which starts tomorrow. “I’m entered into the team pursuit, individual pursuit, omnium and Madison, but the priority is the Olympic events so that is the team pursuit, omnium and Madison,” Archibald explains. “And so if something is to take a hit it’s the individual pursuit.
“The first question is ‘do I think in current form that I could put down a good result in the individual pursuit or so that I could do myself proud on the individual pursuit, could I perform well?’And I’m not currently convinced of that. The secondary question to that is ‘am I going well enough to still contend?’ That is something to weigh up the pros and cons of. I want to go and defend a title, but will it end up holding me back with the run-in to the omnium?’ There’s a guide book going around of how many titles you have to defend. Somebody tagged me in it.”
If all these options illustrate Archibald’s versatility, all the injuries have caused her to consider her mortality for a moment. While Archibald will spend less time, rather than more, competing on the road as she builds up to Tokyo 2020, the example of that other talented pursuit rider, Geraint Thomas, proves that anything is possible provided you can keep yourself upright.
“I’ll be honest, the injuries I’ve gone through, and it sounds really Americanised, but it does motivate you to pick yourself up and go to a new level,” said Archibald. “That’s not to say there’s complacency but having your potential performance and all these opportunities to be in a world-class elite sport, having that taken away does wake you up quite substantially. Consistency is key and this coming cycle as we get closer to the Olympics stress levels go up and I’m very keen to probably end up avoiding the road a bit with the ambition of just staying injury free and healthy.”
Archibald endured what in her words she called a “pants” road season, and currently is available under what might be cycling’s equivalent of the Bosman ruling. Her team Wiggle High Five announced their closure in 2019, which means she is currently a free agent, albeit one who plans to devote most of the next 12 months to the track.
A signal of what she could have to offer on the road in the future, however, was a recent third place behind the illustrious Marianne Vos at the BeNe Ladies Tour in the Netherlands, in the event that the one-stage La Course is ever expanded to the format of a three-week Grand Tour.
“I will be signing for a new team but I don’t have anything yet,” she said. “The focus now goes into track and that might mean I’ll be doing more time trials when it comes to the road, more crit racing. I wonder if Geraint feels like he’s done everything he could on track,” says Archibald. “Certainly he’s made a huge success out of it. I suppose it interests every rider because we’re all ego-driven maniacs. You assume you can be the greatest of all time. That’s what Geraint is proving himself to be, in the same breath as Bradley Wiggins and Chris Hoy. Maybe more like Brad perhaps in going from track to road.
“It’s a different conversation though for female track cyclists because the Tour is so far away from, say, a 3km pursuit, to go and make that same journey. But at least that’s not an underground conversation now. That’s an everyday chat with people asking ‘where is the women’s three-week grand tour?’ Would I want to participate if it happened? Right now no.”
For now, the focus is very much the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome, trying to eke every last milisecond out of yourself and British cycling’s custom-mate Cervelo bikes. “It is like a slightly scary Christmas present I suppose [when you get a new one], where you’re quite a demanding child and you really want to accept the wrong toy,” she said. “You want to come a month in advance so you can get used to it and then feel excited on Christmas Day.”
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