'I want the world to know Rab was a legend': Katie Archibald opens up on the death of her partner

Archibald is talking very quickly and quietly now, hardly stopping to pause for breath. She talks about researching nursing degrees, and Greenwood coming up to Glasgow in an attempt to change her mind; joining Wardell on one of his training camps in the Alps where he convinced her to try downhill mountain biking, and discovering she “wasn’t anxious” doing that; and returning to Scotland where she became “like one of those lockdown puppies with attachment anxiety”, following Wardell around, constantly needing his reassurance, and ringing Greenwood to suggest that she “may have found a way to move forward”, then meeting the British Cycling physiologist for the third time that year to devise her third training plan for the year. She says she replays the sequence of events leading up to Wardell’s death “constantly” in her head, as if on a loop. Starting with his appearance on ‘The Nine’ – a BBC Scotland programme – to discuss his Scottish mountain bike title, welcoming him home, joking that he was this big “fancy” star, sitting on the sofa together, waking up the next morning, her initial response, for which she has clearly beaten herself up ever since. She says the official cause of death, hypertrophy of the left ventricle, or ‘athlete’s heart’, causes her to wonder constantly whether Wardell might still be alive had he not returned to elite level competition.