It’s somewhat ironic that thousands of hours go into preparing for an Olympic Games, but it can take only seconds to wreck those preparations entirely.
Had everything gone to plan this summer, Katie Archibald would be doing this interview as a three-time Olympic champion.
Instead, Scotland’s greatest-ever female cyclist didn’t even make it onto the plane to Paris for the Olympic Games, never mind reach the point of contesting for gold medals.
As Paris 2024 approached Archibald was, it seemed, well on track to repeat her success that had seen her become Olympic champion at both Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.
Having developed her training programme with her brother, John, himself a Commonwealth Games medallist for Scotland, things were going “brilliantly”, recalls Archibald.
Until, they weren’t.
Literally within the blink of an eye, Archibald went from being one of Team GB’s brightest gold medal hopes to being unable to walk.
Less than six weeks before the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympics, Archibald tripped over a step in her garden.
As she says herself, “an inconsequential fall” resulted in “an injury of great consequence”.
The fall dislocated her foot, the dislocation broke her tibia and fibula and the break ripped two ligaments off the bone.
Before she’d even begun to process what had happened, she was told she wouldn’t be at the Olympic Games in Paris.
But, as is typical with high-achieving athletes, Archibald quickly began to doubt the pessimism – or realism – of the specialists’ prognosis.
But in the end, she was forced to accept that, in fact, the specialists were right, Paris would come too soon.
“After just a few days I was putting weight on my foot, and I'm thinking they might be wrong. And so I tried to get myself on the non-travelling reserves list that would keep my options open and I had this glimmer of hope," the 30-year-old from Milngavie says.
“But what ended up happening was Sparky (Stephen Park, British Cycling’s performance director) actually said they'd had medical advice and it would be negligence to put me on the non-travelling reserve list because I would keep training, and this would cause irreversible damage.
“It was really noticeable the weight that lifted off my chest when it was somebody else's decision, and it didn't feel like I was the one giving up.”
It would be easy to assume that the hardest part of the summer for Archibald was watching the Olympics from her couch when every day since the conclusion of Tokyo 2020 had been focused on her succeeding in Paris herself.
But instead, it was the commencement of the racing that freed her up to just enjoy Paris 2024 as a fan of sport.
“I did watch the Olympics,” she says.
“The only emotion I felt that I was uncomfortable with was jealousy.
“On day one of the events that I'd been targeting, I felt anxious and stand-offish and I wasn't being a nice person to be around. But when the racing actually started and I could be immersed as a fan, that was the biggest escape.
“It seemed 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.
“The joy that you get from the sport was enough of an escape to take my mind off the fact that it wasn't me doing it.”
Since her injury, things have gone remarkably smoothly for Archibald.
It’s nothing less than she deserves given this Olympic dream-ruining injury isn’t even close to the worst thing that’s happened in her life in the past few years; in 2022, her partner and fellow Scottish cyclist, Rab Wardell, died suddenly of a cardiac arrest at their home in Glasgow.
It would be easy, and understandable, then, for Archibald to feel sorry for herself.
Instead, however, she already has made the decision to go for the next Olympic Games, which will be in LA in 2028, and she believes everything she’s been through in recent years has given her a freedom to try things that she may not have tried had things gone more to plan in the build-up to Paris.
“It felt so clear to me so quickly that I wanted to go to LA,” she says.
“Unfinished business is probably a toxic driver.
“The driver that I do have is I know that I'm good at this, I know that I really enjoy it, and I know that it's all grounded in Olympic success.
“And so I feel super motivated for LA, but I do want to be cautious that I'm not just completing unfinished business.
“I have felt a little bit like I've had my back against the wall the last couple years and it's made me uncompromising in that I've only wanted things to be done the way that I know they should be done.
“I've been quite demanding and it was all to try and make it to Paris under circumstances that I didn't think were as ideal as previous run-ins I'd had.
“Whereas now, I just feel like I have so much space to explore and so much room to make errors and I feel so motivated to make those explorations and to open myself up to the possibility of those mistakes. And that feels really good.”
The first step in Archibald’s journey towards LA 2028 comes today, at the World Championships in Ballerup, Denmark, where Archibald will ride the madison, alongside her fellow Scot Neah Evans, and the team pursuit.
She’s quick to acknowledge that a post-Olympics World Championships isn’t always the most competitive major event of any four-year cycle, and she also admits that she’s only at around 80 percent of her best physically.
But in the madison particularly, tactics and luck play a significant part in who ends up on the podium and so given that, there remains a very real chance that Archibald could add more silverware to the 13 world championship medals, including five titles, that she already has in her trophy cabinet.
“This week, my targets are as high as they always would be, which is probably higher than the average attendant,” she says.
“As far as Worlds go, this won't be the most competitive of the four year cycle, but I will be as competitive as I can be.”
