Pain game won’t derail Archibald
ASEASON ravaged by injury is not stopping Katie Archibald from setting her sights on a gold medal at the forthcoming European Championships.
The Scottish cycling star faced a battle to be fit for the event after she was involved in a crash during the Tour de Yorkshire in May which left her with a broken collarbone.
Yet the 24-year-old declared: ‘It’s not holding me back in any way,’ before joking: ‘I’ve managed to fit in new injuries since then. There’s always something to complain about.
‘The first race I had back after doing my collarbone on the road, I managed to injure my ribs.
‘Then last week I’ve managed to have a crash that’s not left my back in a brilliant way. We’re so preoccupied with so many other spinning plates that it goes into the background.
‘But the injuries I’ve gone through, it does motivate you to pick yourself up and go to a new level.
‘Having your potential performance, and all these opportunities to be in a worldclass elite sport, taken away does wake you up quite substantially.’
The injuries have presented a challenge for Archibald, who was in excellent form coming into this season with a gold medal in the individual pursuit at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in April.
She said: ‘For my own ambitions, 2017 was a fantastic season. I put a lot of pressure on (myself) that this should be a successful season. And it has not been. That’s okay. You learn stuff.
‘I just had unrealistic ambitions and that comes down to your assessment of the situation. It all comes down to expectations. It’s hard to say that I was proud of that season because of expectations.
‘Injuries got in the way. We had the Commonwealth Games running right through April. Road starts in May and we have the Europeans here in August, so it was only going to be May, June and July.
‘What I expected to pack into those three months is pretty unclear. Maybe with a bit more maturity, it might not have felt so dour.’
For many of the athletes competing here, the competition marks the beginning of the road towards the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Archibald will be featuring in four events for Great Britain; team pursuit, individual pursuit, omnium and madison. While she won gold for the individual pursuit in April, she is not convinced she will pull off another victory.
‘The priority is the Olympic events, so that is the team pursuit, omnium and madison. If something is to take a hit, it’s the individual pursuit,’ she admitted.
‘At the moment the first question is: Do I think in current form that I could put down a good result in the individual pursuit or could do myself proud on the individual pursuit? Could I perform well? And I’m not currently convinced. The secondary question is: Am I going well enough to still contend?’
Archibald will be partnered with Laura Kenny in the omnium and madison events, having previously won gold with Emily Nelson at the World Championships and Elinor Barker at the Manchester World Cup the previous season.
It’s this depth of talent and an ability to rotate the partnerships which leads Archibald to believe GB is a threat for a Glasgow medal haul.
‘When we are doing video analysis of other teams, we can feel confident because we know the pairs that will be their Ateam. It’s not quite as easy to do that with us,’ she said. ‘They’ll know we’ll be on the start list but it’s not something they can train against. We can rotate so easily.’