Katie's Profile

Scotland’s Archibald was one quarter of the Olympic gold-medal winning British team pursuit team in Rio 2016, and alongside Laura Kenny won the first ever women’s Madison event at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, as well as boasting an impressive collection of world, European and Commonwealth honours.

After a relatively late start to her competitive cycling career, Archibald quickly established herself as one of the world’s leading track endurance riders and became a firm favourite among British cycling fans.

By the time the delayed Olympic Games in Tokyo rolled around in the summer of 2021, she had amassed 50 medals at Olympic and Commonwealth Games, World and European Championships and UCI Track World Cup meetings. Amazingly, 33 of them were gold, most in the team pursuit, but also including titles in the individual pursuit, omnium, Madison, elimination and points races.

Archibald only began her competitive cycling career, in grass track racing, in her native Scotland at the age of 17, having started her sporting career in swimming. But in a little more than two years her talent had been spotted by the Great Britain Cycling Team who added her to their Olympic Development Academy in the autumn of 2013.

Her senior competitive debut came in the 2013 UEC European Track Championships and was a sign of things to come as she won the gold medal in the team pursuit, with Laura Kenny (then Trott), Dani King and Elinor Barker, breaking the world record in the new event twice in the process.

Over the next three years, Archibald would be part of a Great Britain team that broke the world record on five more occasions, up until the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in which her team broke the mark on all three of their rides on the way to the first Olympic gold of her career.

In the lead up to that first Olympic Games, her successes in both team and individual events suggested she was on a trajectory to Olympic gold, winning her first UCI World Track Championship gold in the team pursuit in Cali, Colombia, becoming the first Scottish woman to be crowned a track world champion.

Archibald then rode for Scotland at her first Commonwealth Games, on her home Glasgow track, where she won bronze in the points race behind Kenny of England and Wales’s Barker.

The track season leading to the Olympics opened with the young Scot in increasingly impressive form, not least in the UEC European Track Championships in Grenchen, Switzerland, in October 2015 where Archibald won three gold medals. 

A knee injury limited Archibald’s racing over the winter but, by Rio, she was part of an unbeatable team pursuit squad in the Games to beat the United States, who themselves had broken the GB world record in qualifying, in a new world record of 4:10.236 - more than two seconds faster than the Americans.

The years that followed saw Archibald awarded an MBE, as well as racking up many more accolades on the road and the track. A second Commonwealth Games beckoned for the proud Scot in 2018 in Gold Coast, Australia, where she did not disappoint with a gold in the individual pursuit and silver - behind Barker - in the points race. By that point, she had already won her third rainbow jersey on the track, at the 2018 UCI Track Cycling World Championships, in the Madison, pairing with Emily Nelson, adding a silver in the team pursuit.

In the run up to the original Olympic year of 2020, Archibald’s team and individual results continued in a positive trajectory, with world and European medals, plus a 14th European title in her only international championship ride during the disrupted season.

The rescheduled Tokyo Games in the summer of 2021 saw the extra tenacity displayed in that year delay pay off as Archibald added a further two Olympic medals to her name; the first ever gold medal in the women’s Madison alongside Laura Kenny, and a silver in the team pursuit with Elinor Barker, Laura Kenny, Neah Evans and Josie Knight.

Post Tokyo saw continued success with three gold medals won at the UEC European Track Championships in Grenchen in the omnium, Madison and scratch races. While the UCI Track Cycling World Championships concluded 2021 with a haul of omnium gold, points race silver, scratch bronze and Madison bronze.

After a post-Tokyo break, Archibald and the team pursuit squad returned to racing with a silver medal at the first UCI Track Nations Cup of the year, an event in which Archibald later crashed out of, sustaining a broken collar bone and concussion. After a break from injury, Archibald closed out the 2022 season at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships alongside Josie Knight, Neah Evans, Anna Morris and Meg Barker, taking home a silver medal.

2023 got off to a strong start for Archibald as she came away from the UEC European Championships with three gold medals in the team pursuit, omnium and Madison, which would see an outstanding 20th European title. The summer saw Archibald triumph in her home velodrome at the first ever UCI Cycling World Championships in Glasgow as part of the women’s team pursuit, winning the world title for the first time in nine years.

The Olympic year got off to a flying start with a win in the Madison alongside Elinor Barker, and silvers in the omnium and team pursuit at the first track nations cup of the season, with Paris well and truly in sight.

 A keen blogger and writer, Archibald has also been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, sharing her humorous views of cycling and life.

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