'Setbacks can be very motivating!' - Katie Archibald on her injury-ravaged preparation for the Commonwealth Games

To say that Katie Archibald’s 2022 campaign has not gone according to plan would be a significant understatement.

At the start of March she “fractured two transverse processes of the vertebrae” - i.e. broke her back.

Then in April, on day three of the Glasgow round of the Track Cycling Nations Cup, Archibald was leading the omnium when she crashed badly in the middle of the points race. As the group she was in slowed subsequent to a sprint, Australia’s Georgia Baker drifted up the track and clipped the world champion’s front wheel with her own rear. Archibald could do nothing about it, and was dispatched to the deck the hard way.

The double Olympic champion, and winner of the inaugural UCI Track Champions League, did not get off lightly, suffering a broken collarbone that required surgery. Three months out from the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, the injuries could not have come at a worse time.

Worse was to come. At the start of this month, not long after returning to the bike, Archibald was out training on the road when she was hit by an SUV. Both ankles were injured though, fortunately, neither broken.

Archibald describes a complex relationship with such setbacks, in keeping with the character she has demonstrated over the course of her career.

“That kind of feeling can be very motivating,” she says. “You end up training, perhaps not harder than you ever have… but far more conscientiously. There’s another gear when the threat of your gold being taken away from you is dangled there.”

Standing between the Scottish rider and Commonwealth gold will be Archibald’s Team GB partner, Laura Kenny, who will compete for England. The pair dominated the Madison at Tokyo 2020, scoring more than twice as many points as the Danish duo in silver.

What is it that makes Archibald and Kenny such a great team?

“We have physical strengths that largely overlap," says Archibald. "It’s our mental differences that create a good unit.”

“[Laura] is a very instinctive racer,” she says. “She’s been winning whatever she does from about the age of eight, when you race with boys… She’s always been in this sport as part of her being. Everything about track racing is connected to her.”

In comparison she describes herself as “reliant more on the cognitive side,” more about “the planning, the agreed terms, the odds… my instincts probably aren’t as good [but] each of us pulling the other into our own domain is really healthy. It develops both of us and means that we have both bases covered when we’re racing together. We can execute excellence in our own domains in a far more nuanced way than somebody being fast and someone being a diesel.”

As well as the Commonwealth Games, Archibald is looking forward to the second edition of UCI Track Champions League. The series will again take place towards the end of the year, with the dates and venues announced on Friday.

Archibald, who was crowned the first endurance champion in London last December, is a proud ambassador of the new racing format.

“The event far exceeded the hype,” she says.

“The league is our opportunity to be professional athletes. I am so glad that it’s arrived in my career.”

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The UCI Track Champions League will benefit from an extensive global broadcast distribution strategy with the aim of reaching and engaging as many cycling fans as possible. The race’s five rounds will be extensively broadcast across Discovery-owned channels including Eurosport linear, OTT as well as GCN+, discovery+ and the GCN Racing digital channels.