FEMALE RIDER OF THE YEAR 1 KATIE ARCHIBALD

Olympic and world titles have placed the Scot front and centre

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It’s late 2014 and 20-yearold blue-haired Katie Archibald is writing in one of her many journals. This one asks her a question each day, things like, who are you closest too? Or what’s your salary? You repeat it every year to create a record of your changing relationships, status and ambitions.

“It asks, ‘What’s something that you’re aspiring to? I’ve written ‘the Olympic omnium spot!’ when it’s just a total pipe dream,” she says. “There’s no way that this is happening. I used to say that I wanted the Olympic omnium spot loads with no sense that it would be attainable at all. But of course, that’s the dream.”

That day comes round again in 2018. “The Olympic omnium spot!” she writes, as she has done each year since. Soon after writing it she decides she’s not ready and takes herself out of the running – she’d been the world champion in the discipline just 12 months before.

“So I’m back again in 2021 and it asks, ‘what’s something that you’re aspiring to?’ It’s almost not funny at this point,”she says before briefly adopting the monotone drawl of a bored teenager, “Still the Olympic omnium spot.”

“I’ve been here before but this is the most serious I’ve been about it,” she explains.