Archibald comes of age with a thrilling surge for omnium gold

Briton repays selectors’ faith at the track worlds Jason Kenny ‘may quit’ before Tokyo Olympics

The 23-year-old Scot from Milngavie won a superb gold in the omnium at the UCI Track World Championships in Hong Kong last night, at the same time putting her friend Laura Kenny on notice that she is going to have a hell of a fight on her hands if she wants to go for a hat-trick of Olympic omnium titles at Tokyo 2020.

Kenny, the four-time Olympic champion, is absent from these championships pending the arrival of her first child in August. But she was watching in the BBC studio in Manchester and professed herself delighted for her team-mate.

Archibald has been quietly growing in stature for some time. A late developer, she took up the sport competitively only in 2011 and was recruited by British Cycling’s development academy midway through the last Olympic cycle.

She was always quick, though, and powerful. Archibald rapidly established herself as part of GB’s all-conquering pursuit team who won gold in Rio last summer.

And she always maintained her individual streak. The hair kept changing colour, she kept writing columns for newspapers and magazines, and even crashed her motorbike last winter, eight months before the Olympics.

Until now, though, Archibald’s opportunities as an individual at world and Olympic level have been limited. The absence from these championships of some of her former team-mates – in addition to Kenny being pregnant, Joanna RowsellShand has retired – meant GB selectors decided to go with a young pursuit team, giving Archibald and Elinor Barker the chance to focus on individual events.

Barker repaid that by taking silver in the scratch race. Now Archibald has gold. “Totally,” she replied when asked whether coaches had been vindicated, although she admitted she was almost left kicking herself after putting “way too much” into chasing her nearest rival, the Australian Amy Cure, and forgetting her tactics in the process, giving Holland’s thirdplaced Kirsten Wild a free ride and tiring herself out in the process.

In the end, she got back on and summoned one final push in the final sprint, claiming fourth place, ahead of her two rivals.

Meanwhile, Kenny revealed that her husband Jason is considering retiring from track cycling. The sixtime Olympic champion, 29, is apparently uncertain over whether to continue until the Tokyo Games. “He’s having six months to decide what he wants to do, whether to carry on or to retire,” Laura told BBC Sport. “I’m not sure he even knows.”