Archibald 'happier on the bike' after freak injury

It took a freak injury and a missed Olympic Games for Katie Archibald to feel "happier on the bike" than she has in a long time.

It is a magical statement to hear from a rider for who the past few years have been full of immeasurable pain and grief.

Injuries - a back fracture, a broken collarbone - preceded more injuries, including two sprained ankles after she was hit by a car in the early summer of 2022.

That August her partner, mountain biker Rab Wardell, died by her side after suffering a cardiac arrest in his sleep.

The Paris Olympics, you hoped, was the rainbow at the end of the storm. But that dream was ended just weeks before by a trip on a garden step that she uses day in, day out - although somewhat more gingerly these days.

"The way that I fall dislocates my foot. The dislocation breaks both of the bones. The bone break rips the ligaments," she explains.

After a summer of brutal rehabilitation, Archibald, 30, estimates she is back to "about 80%" of her physical best.

But her time off the bike has given her a greater appreciation for her life on it, and she returns to the boards for this week's track cycling World Championships - shown live on the BBC from Wednesday - simply wanting to have fun.

"I just really wanted to get back on my bike, back to the routine, back to that freedom of doing what you're good at," she says.

"So now that I am able to push again, the fact that I can turn up to the track sessions as a contributor and not just a burden, and all of the benefits that come with being part of a team that you love, I feel more aware of those elements that are just making me happier on the bike than than I've been in a long time."

Her injury, as Archibald says, was one of "great consequence off the back of something seemingly inconsequential".

At first, the double Olympic champion didn't believe the doctors when they told her Paris was off the cards. She found herself searching for loopholes in their words, "because they weren't experts in cycling, and the people that were experts in cycling weren't experts in ankle surgery".

Ultimately, it took a kind phone call from British Cycling's performance director Stephen Park for the truth to hit home.

"It was really noticeable the weight that it lifted off my chest, when it was somebody else's decision, and it didn't feel like I was the one giving up," Archibald - a five-time world champion - says.

"Now that I have hindsight, it's comical to think that I thought there was ever even the tiniest glimmer of hope."

But after a tormenting Olympic cycle, you can forgive Archibald for clinging on to every last thread.

"I have felt a little bit like I've had my back against the wall the last couple years," she says.

"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 controlling in my plan, been quite obsessive over having the elements of it right.

"I've maybe been, on occasion, hard to work with from my coach's perspective, 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 that I'd had."

Katie Archibald has five world titles and two Olympic gold medals

Watching Olympics the 'best distraction'

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."