'I really don't know how this has happened' - Katie Archibald set for National Track Championships return after six-year absence

The last time Katie Archibald raced at the British National Track Championships, the UK had a queen, the number one album in the charts was the soundtrack to the Greatest Showman, and the words ‘Covid-19’ had never been uttered.

That was 2019. Now, six years on, the 30-year-old is set to make her return.

Next week, Archibald will compete in the points and scratch races at the annual championships in Manchester. She's one of a number of Olympians – including Emma Finucane, Sophie Capewell and Matthew Richardson – using the event as a season opener. For Archibald, in particular, there's a hope it will help her "reconnect" with the sport, after years of focusing on bigger goals.

“I really don’t know how this has happened,” she said of her six-year absence. “I kind of saw myself as someone that really loved riding Nationals, it’s my favourite thing to turn up to, and it’s always meant it’s got this real big, emotional attachment to it."

Archibald's list of achievements in cycling is so far reaching, that her success at the Nationals tends to be forgotten. Yes, she has two Olympic gold medals, six world titles, and 20 European titles – an all-time record; but etched at the bottom of her palmarès, too, are an impressive 11 national track titles – her most recent of which came on her last appearance, when she won the individual pursuit.

“For so many people that’s your breakthrough," she said of the competition, "because as an amateur you can turn up to Nationals and beat [the top riders] and it’s nice to be part of that journey for other people, I suppose, or to defend your stature as somebody that made it.

“The way things have conspired, there’s always been something else to prioritise. Perhaps it’s a reflection of a good reset that I’m finally back for Nationals, and ready to rebuild.”

Archibald will go into next week’s Nationals fresh from a five-week break over the winter, the longest of her career. She ended last season by winning her sixth rainbow jersey, followed by the overall at the UCI Track Champions League, turning around a torrid summer, in which she missed the Paris Olympics due to a broken leg.

Still, she said, she felt an “ironic comedown” after winning the team pursuit at October's World Championships. “It was the first time in my career that something like that hadn’t acted as a springboard or a way to carry momentum on,” Archibald explained.

“[I’ve had a] big break, and a big sort of reassessment of long-term goals,” she continued. “I’m in this sweet spot where I’ve got no intention in terms of tackling a massive road season. All of my goals are in the latter half of the year, around Worlds in October and the winter TCL.

“I guess I want to be able to race [the Nationals] to – this sounds really cheesy – reconnect to what it was like before, when this would have been the main goal of my season. I’m looking forward to it.”

The event will be Archibald’s only major track competition this year before the World Championships. She was originally due to compete at the season’s only UCI Nations Cup meet, in Turkey, but found out recently that budget decisions within British Cycling mean a women’s endurance squad will not be sent.

“I guess it’s just a standard pattern of the Olympic cycle that you dedicate your resources into the pointy end,” she said.

“I know really clearly that I want to go to the LA games. But you can’t pull a foot over the bed and think every day about something that’s four years away. The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2026 is a really, really exciting thing in my season planning for the next two years on.”

Until then, though, Archibald's looking for new experiences, new ways to keep herself motivated on the bike; the first of which will come next week with her Nationals comeback. Then, she explained, she might make a hard turn out of the velodrome, and onto the trails.

“If I’m honest, a lot of what I’ve been doing is riding my mountain bike,” she said. “So I’m playing around with the idea of entering some of the local cross country races to see how that can buttress my [track] season.”

The British National Track Championships are scheduled to take place at the Manchester Velodrome on 21-23 February.