Even before his partner's death, Archibald was considering giving up his cycling career. Photo: John Super
Katie Archibald is fighting back tears, as she has been for most of the last hour. A Scottish cyclist recalls sitting in Katkin Brace Country Park, a familiar landmark on Glasgow's southern skyline, with her partner Rab Wardell, the Scottish mountain bike champion. In particular, she thinks of a bench 10 minutes from their house where they could sit together and marvel at how happy they are.
“It's the perfect place to have a view of the city,” says two-time Olympian Archibald. “You can see [Sir Chris Hoy's] velodrome, you can pinpoint exactly where the West Highland Way will be, and Ben Lomond, and Gleniffer Brace, and the Kilpatrick and Campsie ranges, and all these things that Rab is connected to, because it is simply synonymous with cycling in Glasgow…”
Wardell died on August 23 last year. His heart stopped as he and Archibald lay in bed together. She woke up around 9 am and found him suffocating. At first she did not understand how serious it was. She offered to bring him a glass of water. Then, when the true horror of what was happening dawned on her, she dialed 999. Paramedics arrived within minutes, but were unable to save his life. He was only 37 years old.
Archibald has not spoken publicly about Wardell's death to this day. Even now, she's not sure she's ready for it. She apologizes, saying that she nearly turned down this interview several times. “The truth is, I’m really in the wrong place to…” she says. “The last few weeks have been… everything is still shit.”
She decided to compete for one reason: the UCI Cycling World Championships kick off in Glasgow later this week. This is the first attempt by the governing body of cycling to combine all four disciplines – track, road, BMX and mountain biking – into one big championship. Wardell was a big supporter of this application, its official adviser. As a trainer, a former employee of Scottish Cycling and a strong supporter of cycling, he was a passionate believer in the power of the bike.
He even hoped to ride himself. After several years of semi-competitive retirement, Wardell returned to elite competition in 2021. Just two days before his death, he won the Scottish Senior Mountain Bike Championship, 20 years after winning the same junior championship.
“So for me, it's not just the World Cup,” says Archibald. “It seems so big. More than any Olympic Games. More than anything I've ever done. The slave loved this sport. He loved the legends of this sport. And these world championships and the talk around them, I feel like a chance for people to talk about him as one of those legends. That's why I'm saying it now.”
Archibald and Rab Wardell are skating together – Cathy wants to use the World Championships as a chance to tell everyone about Slave
It is clearly not easy for her to do this. We meet at the velodrome but escape to a café in Manchester's north quarter for privacy. Archibald first chats, joking about living in a new apartment with teammate Josie Knight and her love of the game show The Chase, which she says she “would like to continue” one day.
But as soon as the conversation turns to the World Cup in Glasgow, she tenses up, avoids eye contact and speaks very quickly in long, uninterrupted monologues. “I don't see how things will go well,” she says. “The last few weeks have been… horrible. I can not explain it. It's like when you get tired to the point where you… I guess everyone has experienced it, where in the first stage you have a little pain in your legs, in the second stage you feel that it is difficult for you to get out of bed, and in the third stage you sort of lose your language skills a little… Stage four is that you just cry all the time.
“Actually I'm having a relatively good day today, but usually I just wake up in the morning and feel that I'm in a diving suit for deep diving.
What a lot of people don't realize, even those who follow cycling closely, is that Archibald was already wrestling last year, before Wardell died. Really fights. To the point where she actually quit the sport at one point, told British Cycling it was “it's over” and started looking for nursing degrees. Again, she didn't talk about it before, but it was Wardell who was her mainstay during that period, which kept her sane.
The “accumulation of failures” unsettled her. Archibald finished 2021 as the best female endurance racer in the world without exception. Having spent much of her early career in Laura Kenny's shadow, the 29-year-old stepped out of her forcefully in Tokyo, where she led the GB pursuit team to silver medals and then organized a glorious gold with Kenny in Madison. She began planning all three endurance races – team pursuit, omnium and Madison – in Paris.
Archibald finished 2021 as the best female endurance racer in the world without exception. Photo: Getty Images/David Fitzgerald
Things went wrong in early 2022. Archibald broke a bone in her back after an accident earlier in the season, leaving her “very depressed” due to “constant pain”.
Then a close relative fell ill. Here she chooses her words carefully, because she does not want to publicly discuss this episode, suffice it to say that it was traumatic and caused her great anxiety and panic.
Another bad accident at the Nations Cup in Glasgow last April saw Archibald knock himself out, this time with a fractured collarbone.
It was during this period that British Cycling was in upheaval due to its regarding transgender people. Archibald, as one of the oldest athletes on the team, and Kenny also struggled with her own health concerns, participated in the discussion on how to respond.
“I found myself writing letters to British Cycling at the same time I was googling the names of all these medicines [for a sick family member] and then I was off to ride. Three hours of just crying, crying, crying, crying, crying… and then going back home and “packing”. I attended all these group chats, all this aggression when people were stressed… I had to take on a lot.”
The “tipping point” came at the end of May last year. Finally getting out of her pain and back on her bike, she was hit by a driver while driving to her mom's house. “It's funny because it was probably the least serious in terms of injuries, even though it was my legs, so I freaked out because I thought my knee was completely broken. But I just really, like, lost it. After that, I couldn't drive without panicking.”
It got to the point that every time Archibald got on a bike—road or static—the same thing happened: her heart rate increased and the experience became “totally overwhelming.” “I kind of keep trudging along, thinking, ‘Maybe this will pass,’” she recalls. “But then when I get to the point where I think, 'This won't work,' I call Monica [Greenwood, former women's endurance coach]. And I say, “I'm sorry. I love the team. I like sport. I love everything we've done together. And I really believed in the dream. And I wish it was still possible. But I can't exercise. So I'm calling to let you know that I'm about to leave the program.”
Archibald suffered a series of injuries that made her nervous every time she got on her bike. Photo: John Super for Telegraph
Archibald now speaks very quickly and quietly, hardly stopping to catch his breath. Later, I look at the timestamps on the tape, and some of her responses are eight minutes long. She jumps from one topic to another. She talks about searching for nursing degrees and Greenwood coming to Glasgow in an attempt to change her mind; joined Wardell at one of his training camps in the Alps, where he convinced her to try downhill mountain biking and found her “not worried” about it; and returning to Scotland, where she became “like one of those isolated puppies with attachment anxiety”, followed Wardell everywhere, constantly needing his reassurance, and called Greenwood to suggest she “may have found a way to move forward” and then met with the British. Cycling physiologist for the third time in a year has developed her third training plan for the year. “And I don't know why I'm laughing,” she says suddenly. “It's not funny. I've never followed this training plan either. About 12 days after that, I woke up in the morning and saw that Rab was choking.”
Archibald continues as if on autopilot. Which, in fact, she is. She says she “constantly” replays the sequence of events leading up to Wardell's death in her head, as if in a circle. She can't do anything about it. Since his appearance on Nine – the BBC's Scottish program – to discuss his Scottish mountain biking title, to welcome him home, to joke that he's such a big “freaky” star, to sit on the couch together, to wake up to the next morning, her initial response, for which she has clearly reproached herself ever since. “I think he has something in his throat and I offer him a glass of water,” she says again.
“And eventually he stops choking, and then I call 999. The ambulance arrived nine minutes later. I found out that the target time seems to be seven, which surprises me. And the average in the UK is nine, which just blows my mind. They tried for an hour. And I don't… I just never… in that hour I started imagining, “What will our life be like now?” But at no point did I think it would end. This whole sequence… is constant… Now she is sobbing softly. “Do you know what it's like to offer someone a glass of water…?”
It is not easy to listen to Archibald, such a powerful athlete, such a rude and complete self-flagellation. She says the official cause of death, left ventricular hypertrophy or “athletic heart,” has her constantly wondering if Wardell might still be alive had he not returned to elite-level competition. “Maybe if he just stayed a little inconsistent, a little shitty…” she says. She regrets her inability to save him, but feels guilty for not using the tragedy to learn potentially saving skills. “I didn’t even take a first aid course,” she says. “I would probably be just as crazy if it happened again.”
The worst thing is when she admits that she feels guilty about not encouraging others to get a heart exam. She turns away. “There is something that seems… I don’t know if I want to admit it… it could have been prevented. And if I start telling other people how to prevent it, then I don’t know, it suits you even more. For example: “Did you know that you could have had a heart scan?” I guess it's selfish.”
I tell her that there is definitely no right or wrong way to deal with grief and trauma, and by simply sharing her story, she will help others who are struggling. Archibald doubts. She says she is grateful for the support of her teammates, British Cycling, she checks in with team psychologist Rich Hampson. But the truth is, she struggles. Her family is a mess. She explains that Wardell has also been a huge support to her mom.
“She could talk to a Slave like no other. Like he used to walk around all the time, even when I was out for races and stuff, and wash all his clothes and cook dinner for him. We both pretend that the other is fine. And I know she's not okay. She's so not okay. I see that she is in pain and she tries to hide it. And so I almost don't want to go into it. Because I feel it too. So we just play along and have lunch on Sundays and talk about cycling.”
Cathy Archibald's career medals
It's almost time for Archibald to leave. She wants to bring the conversation back to the World Cup. She says that she has come to terms with the fact that she cannot show her best side. “I’ve been excluded from all of our efforts over the past couple of weeks,” she says bluntly. “Something went wrong. I don't see how in a week and a half I'll be able to do what I wanted to do, which is the thought that success will give me a moment… to be with him. But yes, I think that's where we're at.”
Archibald says it's more important that she be there. For Gill, Wardell's mom, whom she talks to “most days” and whose courage and compassion for others, despite her own suffering, is “an inspiration”. For her own mom, who's having such a hard time. Most for Slave.
“There is conflict in the fact that part of the reason the World Cup means so much to me is because of Rab,” she notes. “They meant so much to him. And because of that, I want to succeed. And I can say that perhaps I would work better if I shut myself off from it. But then what's the point? You know? Like, if I'm pretending… then you can… I mean, why would I do that? I have no future, I have nothing to return home to… Like, why should I? So it's almost like I need it to mean something, but that's why it's so hard.
“I can say that maybe from a health standpoint I don’t have to do everything about him. Which is funny because it looks like a permanent earworm. In fact, I don't talk about it all the time because I don't know what to say to people. “Oh, by the way guys, I'm so devastated.” But he is the first person I talk to when I wake up and the first person I talk to when I go to bed. But yes, I think I don't want the worlds to pass empty, as I said at the beginning, for him as an icon of Scottish sports.
There are some things she looks forward to. Archibald talks about plans for a mural to be painted on the side of the Montrose Street car park before the race; Wardell wheelies down the same street after falling in the 2013 National Road Race. “This is not the best place for that,” she smiles. “That's not what you should be doing. But I think, as an emblem of who he was, I think it fits very well. I know he would love it. Attention everyone.”
Wardell rides on his back wheel in the Queens Baton relay for the Commonwealth Games. Photo: Daily Record/Phil Dye
Archibald laughs, and for a moment it seems that the clouds are dissipating. Perhaps there are brighter days ahead of us? “You know, Reb's slogan was like, 'Ride your bike, go outside,'” she says. “But he kept telling me that if you were supposed to have a life mission, a life goal, it was, ‘Relax, have fun. the time is now. Because it seems to me that the phrase “Ride your bike, go outside” goes back to the darker times when Rab really struggled with himself after he lost his best friend to suicide. This was before we were together. And his mantra “Bike, go outside” was like a driver for health.
“I think I'm a little devastated that I'm now back on 'Biking, go out'.” Like, we managed to achieve “Relax, have fun.” This is the expert level. If you're not there, I think you just need to go back and take care of yourself.”
Everyone involved in cycling, a British sport, anyone with a heart, should hope that one of the most humble, but the impressive sportsmen of Britain are capable of it. This Archibald will have the opportunity in the coming weeks to sit on this bench, to have this moment with him. And find peace.
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