IT’S easy to forget that Katie Archibald is an Olympic rookie.

Having already become world champion and six-time European champion, as well as having bagged world silver and Commonwealth bronze, Archibald is seen as a mainstay of the widely lauded British Cycling team.

Yet Rio will be her first Olympic Games and, as she keeps being reminded, it will be like nothing she has ever experienced in her life.

“This definitely doesn’t feel the same as the lead-up to any other event but also, everyone keeps saying that it will be very different,” she says. “Even my psychologist has been telling me this will be bigger than anything I’ve ever been to before and I was thinking: ‘I thought it was your job to not psyche me out?’

“Hopefully when I get there I’ll be a lot more relaxed than I’m expecting.”

Archibald is something of a phenomenon; in a world that tells us if children haven’t chosen a sport in which to specialise by the time they have started primary school then it’s too late, it is remarkable to think that just a few years ago, Archibald had never even ridden on a track.

Only four years ago, as some of her now teammates were gearing up to win Olympic gold at their home Games, Archibald won her first race, the junior nationals. That she will travel to Rio later this month with a very real chance of returning as Olympic champion says much about the talent of the 22-year-old from Milngavie.

Archibald will compete in the team pursuit and will have the experience of Olympic champions Laura Trott and Joanna Rowsell Shand to steady her nerves, alongside Ciara Horne and Elinor Barker, who complete the team pursuit squad.

Speaking to Archibald is always a refreshing experience. She is, without exception, considered, engaging and unfailingly honest, and none the more so when asked how she feels now that her Olympic debut is just a few short weeks away.

“It’s quite a thing that Rio is now being referred to in terms of weeks away rather than months or years,” she says. “That’s what terrifies me the most because weeks are nothing.

“Some of my teammates are desperate for it to be here and I felt like that months ago but now that it’s so close, it’s pretty scary. With any other race, I’ve always been super-excited to get out there and get going but because Rio has been such a massive one for such a long time, and, really, every other race I’ve done has had this in mind, there’s not that same eagerness to finish it because it’s been such a massive part of my life. I know that sounds ridiculous but it’s true.

“When I was a kid, I watched the Olympics and thought: ‘Those people are amazing, I could never do that,’” she adds. “I’ve always just looked to the horizon that’s within eyesight so, for me, that was going to local races and then national races and this just slowly crept up on me.”

Archibald and her teammates go into Rio in a somewhat alien position for the British pursuit team; at the 2016 World Championships, GB won only bronze, which was the British team’s worst result since the discipline was introduced at the event, although Archibald missed the competition through injury. While it means the GB squad do not go to Brazil as outright favourites, as they were at London 2012, it is not, says Archibald, a wholly negative scenario.

“I actually think that in a funny way, it could be a good thing,” she explains. “Nobody ever wants to get silver or bronze rather than gold at the Worlds but it means that we maybe go into the Olympics more relaxed. It feels quite nice to be the hunter rather than the hunted.”

The success of the British cyclists in previous Olympic Games is both a blessing and a curse; previous medal hauls means that the expectations on the British riders are immense but that success also means that Archibald is surrounded by a plethora of Olympic champions, which can never be a bad thing.

“Even though we’ve got a chance of winning gold, I don’t actually think that’s any more pressure than anyone else who’s going to the Olympics because it’s the pinnacle of their sport for most athletes, so I’d expect they’re just as nervous,” she says.

“It’s good having people around who are Olympic champions though. If they’ve won a gold medal they know how to do it and I guess that’s the first step in teaching others how to do it. That makes a difference.”