The past few months have been something of a novelty for Katie Archibald. As an Olympic gold medallist and world and European champion on the track, she rarely goes into races as the underdog but having signed for UCI pro team, WNT, and turned her attention to the road this spring, there has been considerably less pressure on her.
The absence of a target on her back every time she hops on a bike has, she admits, been a welcome change. “It’s been brilliant having less pressure on me – I can slip under the radar a bit,” she said. “In the track season, everything is geared towards the World Championships or Olympics but in this road season, there’s not one major target so it’s more about just enjoying the racing. It’s been much more laid back.”
Despite Archibald being somewhat unproven on the road prior to this season, she has made her mark remarkable quickly and has already bagged a top-10 finish in stage 3 of the Women’s Tour as well as victories in the Matrix Fitness Grand Prix Series and Cicle Classic. It leaves the 23-year-old in a good position going into this week’s National Road Race Championships in the Isle of Man, with Archibald’s first outing in Thursday’s time trial, while she also will make an assault on the road race on Sunday. “I’m swinging between excitement and fear,” the Glaswegian admits. “With some races, I go in day-dreaming about what it would be like to win them but this isn’t one of those. In the time-trial, I can be a bit more specific in that I want to get a top-5 or maybe a podium but I’ve lost my confidence a bit after not doing so well in a recent local race so I’ll just have to see how it goes. And with the road race, it’s such an open game that I wouldn’t want to make any bets.”
While the advantage of her lack of experience on the road is reduced expectation, the down side is that Archibald remains far from the finished article, something that she is all too aware of. “I’m still learning – although not quick enough,” she said. “On the road, it’s not good enough to just have the legs – your head is very important and having a strong team around you is vital. I’ve spent five years trying to learn how to race on the track and it’s only in the last year I’d say that it’s come together so I’d like to think that I’m not starting at square one with the road or else it’ll be a long five years ahead of me.”
While Archibald’s year personally is going swimmingly, the same cannot be said for British Cycling, whose programme Archibald has been a part of for almost four years. An independent review released last week found there to be a “culture of fear” within the British Cycling team, as well as an autocratic style of management being employed. The findings may have been unfavourable for the governing body but Archibald insists that she has not been adversely affected by the negative press that has surrounded British Cycling in recent months. “I’ve been racing so much that I’ve not been completely tuned into what’s been happening,” she said. “Over the past few months, we’ve been finding things out through the press just like everyone else – there’s not some secret memo that’s going out to riders. I think it’s better to be involved and be aware of the actions that are taken though because at the end of the day, we all have the same goal.”
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