Archibald opens GB account with gold in omnium

A flawless performance by Katie Archibald earned Britain’s first gold medal of the UCI track world championships in Roubaix last night.

Archibald, a two-time Olympic champion, was the biggest name included in a GB squad featuring mostly up-and-coming talent, given the timing of this year’s track worlds, just a few months after the Tokyo Games.

The 27-year-old Scot lived up to her reputation, dominating the omnium from start to finish with back-to-back wins in the scratch, tempo, elimination and points races. Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky took the silver and Italy’s Elisa Balsamo the bronze.

“I turned up pretty nervous,” Archibald said. “When you have the first event go well, like I did with the scratch race, it gives you more confidence to race aggressively as you go through the day.”

It caps an incredible year for Archibald, who became Olympic madison champion alongside Laura Kenny in Tokyo before securing three gold medals at the European Championships in Switzerland this month. And she could yet land more gold in today’s madison, in which she competes alongside room-mate Neah Evans.

Meanwhile, British Paralympic cyclist Erin Mcbride has been banned for three years for the use of the banned substance ostarine.

The visually-impaired sprinter returned a positive result in an outof-competition test at the National Cycling Centre in Manchester on March 3 – 13 days before she signed on to become a full member of British Cycling’s Paralympic World Class Programme.

British Cycling said it was notified of the adverse finding on April 15, and that Mcbride was immediately suspended.

Mcbride, 23, who was a European champion in athletics as a teenager before converting to cycling, was charged with a doping violation in August after her B sample confirmed the adverse finding.