Katie Archibald: Inspiring the world in the face of tragedy 

2022 had already been a tough year for Katie Archibald. With the Commonwealth Games on the near horizon, the twice-crowned Olympic champion and stalwart of the British track cycling team had suffered a devastating accident where she "went flying over the bonnet of a 4x4" that left her with two burst ankles and her dreams of competing in those championships in tatters.

“I got to the point where I really wasn't coping," she told GB cycling legend Chris Hoy in an interview a year later with BBC Sport where she outlined the mental toll that accompanied the latest in a line of injuries that included concussions, a fractured back and broken collarbone.

However, there was nothing that could have prepared the Scottish cyclist for what was about to happen, as a tragic event turned her life upside down.

On 23 August 2022, Archibald was lying in bed with her partner Rab Wardell, who just two days previously had fulfilled a lifelong dream of winning the Scottish Mountain Bike Championships for the first time, and saw him visibly struggle for air.

“I think he's got something in his throat and I offer him a glass of water,” she told the Telegraph, recalling the night that would change her world.

“And eventually he stops gasping and that's when I call 999. The ambulance got there in nine minutes. I've learned that apparently the target time is seven, which amazes me. And the UK mean is nine, which just blows my mind.

"They tried for an hour. And I didn't, I just never, in that hour I started imagining 'What is our life going to be like now?' But at no point did I think that it would be over.”

Despite the best efforts of Archibald and the medical services, Wardell passed away that night having suffered what she later found out was cardiac arrest.

"I tried and tried, and the paramedics arrived within minutes, but his heart stopped and they couldn't bring him back. Mine stopped with it," Archibald wrote in a heart-wrenching post on Instagram.

How cycling helped Archibald move forward

While nothing could displace the profound sadness of Wardell’s sudden death, Archibald turned back to the one thing she knew best as she looked to find a way to carry on.

Prior to that time, anxiety and fear of failure had left Archibald struggling with her own sense of self-worth and she admitted to being “scared” of not reaching the standards she had set for herself.

But just days after the tragic incident, she returned to cycling and found in her sport a sense of release that even she could never have expected.

"I got on the bike about three days afterwards and I realised I wasn't scared anymore,” she told the BBC.

"The worst thing had happened and that anxiety had gone. There was just a total blankness, a pain that really overwhelmed it.

"Now I'm back to really relying on the sport as my one grounding thing."

Riding in honour of Rab: Katie Archibald’s return to the top

Just a year after Wardell’s death, the 2023 UCI Track Cycling World Championships took place in Glasgow.

The championships had held a special place in both Archibald and Wardell’s lives - but perhaps even more so for him, as it was held in the city in which he grew up.

“Rab was so involved in these championships and this dream of a home worlds,” Archibald explained to the Guardian. “He had such a love for sport on two wheels and for Glasgow, that’s what this whole event is about.”

In August 2023, weeks before the anniversary of Wardell's death, Archibald returned to the velodrome to ride for her country and - in no small way - in honour of her partner.

In the gold medal race of the Team Pursuit, Britain beat New Zealand by more than four seconds to claim the world title.

It was her fifth World Championships gold but not many could have been as special as this.

An inspiration in the face of tragedy

On Sunday 5 November, Archibald received the Helen Rollason Award for Inspiration at the Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year awards. It came after a year in which she also won three European golds to add to her world title in Glasgow.

The 29-year-old openly admits that cycling has helped her through her darkest moments, perhaps not as a source of healing but by giving her the focus that she needs to move on in life.

“It’s the foundation of so many other things: how you view yourself, how you approach goals,” she explained.

But there is also a future hope that she will be able to use the skills she has learned on the bike in her journey beyond sport, so that when she does eventually move onto her next life stage, the principles that have made her a world-class cyclist will leave her in good stead in whatever new ventures she chooses to pursue.

“Hopefully when retirement comes I’ll be able to move these mindsets or skillsets into other domains, but at the moment I don’t think I’m quite robust enough to do that,” she said. “So I’ll just be reliant on the systems I’ve built up over the last decade to make life a little bit easier.”

For now, Archibald continues to race at the highest level, and in doing so honour the memory of Wardell whose greatest passion was to "ride bikes” and “get outside”.

She has also laid out her grand ambitions for Paris 2024 where she will target three gold medals that would make her only the fourth Brit to do a treble at a single Olympic Games.

And while nothing can be a substitute for the pain she has suffered, her journey in sport - and life - continues to inspire people across the world.