Archibald’s magic year ends with more silver

KATIE ARCHIBALD rounded off her remarkable year yesterday with a fourth medal in four events at the Track Cycling World Championships. The Scotswoman took silver in the points race on the final day of action at Roubaix, France, to add to the gold she won in the omnium and her bronzes in the team pursuit and madison. It capped a glorious few weeks on the track for Archibald (below), who claimed a gold and silver at the Tokyo Olympics in August, as well as a hat-trick of titles at the European Championships earlier this month. ‘I feel so tired, I want to go home,’ grinned the 27-year-old, who was Britain’s only Olympic champion to compete in France, with others like Laura Kenny opting to rest. ‘It’s so emotionally draining wanting something so bad. I’m really pleased. The harder it is, the happier you are.’ Archibald is the first female British rider to win four medals at the same World Championships since Becky James in 2013. Her silver took Great Britain’s overall tally in France to eight medals, their best haul at a World Championships since 2016. Great Britain’s head coach Jon Norfolk said: ‘We have experienced Olympians and younger athletes in their first World championships and some of those have won medals, which is really encouraging. It fuels the enthusiasm and momentum we want to create for Paris 2024.’ Meanwhile, British Cycling faced fresh questions last night after the Mail on Sunday revealed that one of their leading athletes rode away from a drug tester days before London 2012. The rider went on an hour-long cycle at a pre-Games training camp instead of submitting to a test straight away. The incident was described as ‘truly troubling’ by a senior anti-doping official, who said it should have been logged as ‘suspicious’ by UK Anti-Doping. UKAD said it was ‘unable to comment on any specific activity in its testing programme’.