Archibald was determined to return and represent Scotland at the Commonwealth Games but in late May, six weeks out from Birmingham, she “went flying over the bonnet of a 4×4”.

Two burst ankles and a dented leg were the obvious consequence. But less apparent was the mental toll.

“All cyclists get injured. All the time. My collarbones are not good. My hips are wrecked. My knees are useless… but I got to the point where I really wasn’t coping,” she says, in a BBC Sport interview with Hoy.

“I ended up with a heart-rate response where I was just terrified all the time. It made training really hard and I was thinking, ‘well, if I can’t train, I can’t do this, and it’s all gone’. So I tapped out.”

Archibald’s focus then became all about immersing herself in partner Rab Wardell’s world.

Rab’s life was “a bit of a shambles” when he and Katie met. But by last summer, she says he had “figured it out”. He had a coaching business. He made films. He was “thriving”.

In August, he won the Scottish mountain bike cross country championships.

Two days later, Archibald woke in their Glasgow flat to find him dead beside her. He had suffered a cardiac arrest in his sleep. He was 37.

“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,” she wrote on Instagram the following day.