![]() ![]() “Actually I’m having a relatively good day today but generally I just wake up in the morning and feel like I’m in a deep-sea diving suit.” Stage four is that you’re just constantly crying. It’s like when the fatigue gets to a point that you’re…I suppose everybody’s experienced this, where if stage one is like your legs are a bit sore, stage two is you can feel it’s hard to get out of bed, and stage three you sort of lose your language skills a bit. “I can’t see a way it’s going to go well,” she says. Archibald initially makes small talk, joking about life in a new flat with team-mate Josie Knight and her love of gameshow The Chase, which she says she’d “love to go on” one day.īut as soon as the conversation turns to the Glasgow World Championships she stiffens up, avoiding eye contact and talking very quickly in long unbroken monologues. We meet at the velodrome but decamp to a cafe in Manchester’s Northern Quarter for some privacy. And these world championships, and the conversations happening around it, I feel, are a chance for people to talk about him as one of those legends. “And so it’s not just a world championships to me,” Archibald says. Just two days before his death he won the senior Scottish cross country mountain bike title, 20 years after victory in the same event as a junior. After years in semi-competitive retirement Wardell had returned to elite competition in 2021. As a coach, a former Scottish Cycling member of staff, and a huge advocate for cycling, he believed fervently in the power of the bicycle. ![]() Wardell was a big believer in the bid, an official advisor to it. It marks the first ever attempt by cycling’s governing body to combine all four disciplines - track, road, BMX, and mountain bike - into one big championship. She has decided to speak for one reason: the UCI Cycling World Championships begin in Glasgow later this week. “The last few weeks have been.everything is still s-.” “The truth is I’m not really in a place to…” she says. She apologises, saying she nearly pulled out of giving this interview a number of times. Even now, she is not sure she is ready to do so. He was just 37.Īrchibald has not spoken publicly about Wardell’s death until today. Paramedics arrived within minutes but were unable to save his life. Then, as the true horror of what was unfolding dawned on her, she rang 999. At first she did not realise how serious it was. ![]() She woke at around 9am to find him gasping for air. He suffered a cardiac arrest while he and Archibald were in bed together. “You can see the velodrome, you can pinpoint where the West Highland Way would be, and Ben Lomond, and the Gleniffer Braes and the Kilpatrick and Campsie ranges, and all of these things that Rab has a connection to because he’s just synonymous with cycling in Glasgow…” “There’s this perfect spot where you can see out over the city,” double Olympic champion Archibald says. In particular she is thinking of a bench, 10 minutes from their home, where they would sit together and marvel at how happy they were. The Scottish cyclist is remembering sitting in Cathkin Braes Country Park, a familiar landmark on the southern skyline of Glasgow, with her partner Rab Wardell, the Scottish mountain bike champion. Katie Archibald is fighting back tears, as she has been for much of the last hour. ![]()
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