KATIE Archibald defended her individual pursuit title at the British Track Cycling Championships in dominant style last night, defeating England’s Emily Nelson by 5.557 seconds in the final to take gold.
Nelson, who at 22 is a year Archibald’s junior began strongly, edging ahead of the Olympic team pursuit champion in the opening few laps but slowly but surely, Archibald reeled her in and around the half-way point and from there, took complete control of the race. “It was good to win,” she said.
“The second ride in particular was seriously painful. Last year, I went for the catch in the final and so this year, as the gun went, I thought I’ll see how I feel and straight away, my legs said no! But it’s great to win – winning a national title still means a lot to me.
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“When I was a junior, the pursuit was my first national title and that’s where everything started – that’s when Scottish Cycling started working with me and then only a year after that, British Cycling started working with me so winning a national title is always special for me.”
In a busy day of racing, Archibald was also in action in the sprint. Despite endurance being her forte, the 23 year-old from Milngavie reached the semi-finals of the sprint. She was defeated by Olympic bronze medallist Katy Marchant in the last four but produced something of an upset in the third-fourth place ride-off, beating defending champion Jess Crampton by two rides to zero to win a surprise bronze medal.
Despite competing in the sprints being something of a novelty for Archibald, she proved herself to be amongst the best in Britain, which she admits was a pleasant surprise. “It was good – it’s nice to try something new,” she said. “And doing the sprint felt like when I first started racing, so that was really nice.”
On the face of it, it seems somewhat random for Archibald to venture into the sprint events but there is, she reveals, a strategy as to why she added the sprint to her schedule this weekend. “The way that the omnium is going now and when I look at my biggest rivals, they’re all very fast in their top-end sprint,” she said. “And so I think that the way to be the best in the world is to be the fastest. It’s no good only having one sprint – you have to be able to back it up. And if you want to get repeatability, it’s no good repeating anything at a low speed. So you need to get that top-end speed and then repeat it again and again and again and again. That’s the way I’ve been training and this was a great chance to test it.”
Archibald’s achievements in the past few years mean that she rarely goes into a race with little pressure upon her shoulders but the sprint was one of those rare times when there was little expected of her. And that was, she admits, an enjoyable change. “I had nothing to lose - I actually feel a little bit guilty because the people I was racing against, it’s all on them because if I los in the sprint, I can sleep fine at night. It was funny trying to justify me entering the sprint to the head coach – he was saying to my coach, so what’s the end game here? But I think it’s worked out well.”
Archibald has another busy day of racing today as she defends her 10km scratch race title, where she will face her at Rio 2016 team pursuit teammate, Elinor Barker, while she will also be in action in the keirin, where one of her main rivals will be her compatriot Neah Evans.