Archibald eyes golden horizon in Los Angeles
Cycling - UCI Track Cycling World Championships - Stab Velodrome, Roubaix, France - October 22, 2021 Great Britain's Katie Archibald celebrates after winning the women's omnium points race 4\4 REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
LONDON :In the high-octane world of track cycling Katie Archibald has reached the age at which riders usually consider hanging up their race helmets, but the 31-year-old Scot is already mapping out her path to glory in Los Angeles in 2028.
In the week that fellow Scot Jack Carlin called time on his track cycling career, aged 28, Archibald was preparing to fly off to Chile as part of the British squad for the UCI track cycling championships in Santiago starting next week.
She will take part in the elimination race and the Madison alongside Maddie Leech, but will not be in the team pursuit squad, although that is the discipline that she concedes she is still 'obsessed with greatness' in.
Archibald, who is now coached by her brother John, missed the Paris Olympics after falling in her garden and breaking two bones in her leg and tearing ligaments weeks before.
That deprived her of the chance to add a third Olympic gold medal to the team pursuit and Madison titles she earned in 2016 and 2020. She returned this time last year to win her sixth world title in Denmark, in the team pursuit, and is now fixated on the path to Los Angeles, beginning in Santiago.
"I do now feel very settled, very motivated, and like I've really found something that, I don't necessarily think will come out in this worlds," Archibald, who also has a record 20 European titles, told reporters on a conference call.
"It feels like a slightly perverse thing to say, but the sense of structure that I've found - working with my brother, I'm based up in Glasgow these days - and I have this imagined future that if things keep going as well as they're going, my career's fine after all.
"I've got a nice imagined future on the horizon, which in a sense starts with this worlds in Santiago."
Archibald will not be in the team pursuit at a worlds for the first time since 2017, but it's the event that drives her.
"I find it a wee bit tricky because I use team pursuit as a feedback mechanism because you're so familiar with your sensations in that event," she said.
"I would say I'm essentially obsessed with greatness in this niche sport. The pinnacle of that is the Olympics. So if I'm interested in becoming the best track cyclist that I can be, that is going to LA. The two are inextricably intertwined. I like having LA as that target on the horizon."
Archibald will be part of a strong British line-up in Chile that also includes sprinter Emma Finucane - who won three medals in Paris including gold in the team sprint - and Finucane's partner Matthew Richardson who will be in his first world championships since switching allegiance from Australia to Britain after the Paris Olympics.
The 22-year-old Finucane is relishing a return to racing after a quiet year in which she has been addressing weaknesses.
"I'm really excited to get on my bike," the two-time world champion in sprint said. "I'm a racer at heart. That time (away from racing) has only made my motivation higher."
Richardson this year became the first rider to break the nine-second barrier for the flying 200 metres.
"To get like 8.8 (seconds) was insane," Finucane said. "It makes me want to do something like that and achieve big goals too."
