Katie Archibald: British cyclist happier on bike’ after freak injury

Missing the “cathartic release” that cycling gave her, and her “community” as her team-mates headed off to the Games, Archibald admits her overriding emotion as the Olympics began was “jealousy”.

“I’d felt really sick and uncertain and anxious and I could tell that I was being standoffish and I wasn’t being a nice person to be around,” she says of the morning of team pursuit qualifying, which would have been her first event of the Games.

But after that, a switch flicked.

“When the racing actually started, and once I could just be immersed as a fan of the sport, that was the biggest escape,” she says.

“It just seemed really funny that the thing that I was trying to avoid thinking about, which was my Olympic dream that wasn’t happening, the best thing to distract me from that was the Olympics.”

Archibald is set to compete in the team pursuit and madison at the World Championships in Ballerup, Denmark, but looking further ahead, she is “super motivated” for the LA 2028 Olympics.

In the interim, however, changes are afoot. She has plans to work with a new coach, to whom she wants to “pass off control” so she can develop herself off the bike, including possibly a university degree.

“I just feel like I have so much space to explore and so much room to make errors that I just feel so motivated to make those explorations and to open myself up to the possibility of those mistakes, and that feels really, really good,” she says.

“This feels very much like the start of a journey for me.”