There are days in cycling that are as dreaded as they are inevitable. In this example, I had secretly hoped that somehow Katie Archibald would keep racing forever. But last week she announced that she’s decided it is time to move on to other things.
This made me sad in a way that few rider retirements do. I’ve worked in and around cycling for a long time, but there are relatively few riders of whom I’d describe myself as a straightforward fan. Katie is one of them. I cared about her successes. I cared about her setbacks. I cared about how things were going for her.
On the track she looked like no one else, and I think that’s where my enthusiasm started. I tend to be a fan of riders who have power. Yes, I like watching someone whose career is built on tactical flare, or someone who sparkles erratically, lights up the race, then dies away. But when it comes to instinctive fandom, I want riders who can pile the watts high and pile them all day long.
>> Why Katie Archibald was such an exceptional athlete
(Although Katie had tactical acumen to burn – she was the first rider who pointed out to me that the team leading at a lap to go for a Madison sprint usually goes on to take the points. It doesn’t sound right, but next time you watch a Madison, watch for it and you’ll find she’s spot on.)
I’m also selfish with my fandom. I want value from my emotional investment. So another reason I liked watching Katie race is that she never let me down. Often she (and usually her team or Madison pair) won. But even if she didn’t, she was almost always in it till the end. Her disappointing races felt rare.
She’s aggravatingly talented in other ways. I interviewed her for a podcast a few years ago. When we got the video call up and running, she explained that the backdrop was Laura and Jason Kenny’s basement, because that’s where she was staying. (It was in the aftermath of Covid, so it made sense for a variety of reasons.)
Former time trial national champion from ten miles to 12 hours, Dr Hutch is a TV commentator, aero consultant and has written multiple books on cycling and sailing.
She ended up giving me a weird upside-down tour of the underside of the Kennys’ floor. “This is the spot where Laura always kicks off that pair of clumpy shoes she likes and wakes me up… this is just below their evil washing machine…” I had to pause the recording so I could stop laughing and straighten myself out. It gave me the idea for a reality TV show called something like “Stalker in the Basement”, but I suspect the only person who could have presented it was Katie and she’s much too intelligent to waste on that.
And of course she wrote a great column for Cycling Weekly for a couple of years – as an insight into being an Olympic athlete it was fabulous. As an insight into being Katie Archibald it was better.
Even in her departure she’s got class. I admire a rider who calmly decides it’s time to move on – so many good riders cling on to racing too long and find that when they finally stop they’ve been obsessed with the aerodynamic properties of their shoulders for so long that they have no coherent idea how to function as an adult member of society.
And even more, I admire someone who goes to find a real job outside sport and do something that’s actually useful. It’s fitting that Katie is abandoning us to be a nurse. I can’t imagine she’ll be anything other than brilliant at that too.
It’s going to feel odd to be a fan of a nurse I’ll almost certainly never meet in a professional capacity at a hospital I’ll never visit, but there we are. That’s what I’m going to be.