MY TOKYO TAKEAWAY
Katie’s quiet curry with family to celebrate gold
But cycling champion Katie Archibald was happy to celebrate back home with her favourite curry instead.
The Milngavie rider took silver in the team pursuit then partnered up with Laura Kenny to take gold in the first ever women’s madison.
All of the usual Olympic razzmatazz was cancelled with athletes made to travel straight home once their event was finished.
That suited Archibald to a tee, with the 27 year-old admitting she’s happier keeping things low-key and personal.
And her favourite moment was getting together with her family for their usual Sunday takeaway.
She said: “I really enjoy the racing but I’m not quite as good at the celebrating. And so there was a bit of pressure taken off that it wasn’t appropriate to be dancing with every other nation! That was more suited to my style.
“I went to the closing ceremony but I had a bit more of a celebration when I got home.
“My mum and my boyfriend came to get me at the airport in these Team GB T-shirts to try to make it as embarrassing as possible.
“And I’ve been for a curry too. My favourite is a malaidar which is a creamy, spinachy thing. Me and my family have been having Sunday curries for the past 15 years or so which is our family’s equivalent of a Sunday roast.”
Archibald was at a Team GB family event at the weekend and revealed it was brilliant being able to show off her medals – three in total after she also clinched gold in Rio in 2016.
She added: “I got the medals into a lot of small, sticky hands. It’s really nice to have a thing that you can just put in someone’s hand. It never gets boring hearing a seven year-old saying: It’s really heavy!”
Archibald was back in Glasgow yesterday to mark the two-year countdown to the 2023 World Championships.
It will be the first time all the different cycling disciplines will take place at the same time in the same country and the three-times world champion is excited to be part of it.
She added: “The freestyle stuff is going to be at Kelvingrove and we’ll be back in the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome for the track cycling.
“It’s nine weeks until this year’s World Championships.
“And then after that we’ve got the Commonwealth Games next year, the 2023 World Championships here and then the Paris Olympics in 2024.
“These are going to be the biggest four years of my career.”