IT is surprising how often supreme individual sportspeople say they derive greater pleasure out of team glory. Think Andy Murray’s one-man effort to land the Davis Cup for Great Britain in 2015, supposedly self-centred stars of the golfing world uniting to land the Ryder Cup or Team Scotland athletes at the Commonwealth Games, each chipping in to swell the combined national medal tally.

You can certainly add Katie Archibald - part of that Scotland team, of course - to that mix. The 24-year-old from Milngavie has been selected only in the Madison and the Team Pursuit events for Great Britain at the UCI World Track Championships which get under way in Pruzskow, Poland, today. In both these events - the Madison sees partners take turns to propel each other around the track – it is the team that is the star, but Archibald thinks sporting triumph tastes even sweeter when you can do it with a little bit of help from your friends.

It also just so happens that both are on the Olympic roster for Tokyo 2020, unlike the individual pursuit, which sadly also happens to clash with her duties in the Madison this week. Although so proficient are both Katie and John in that event right now that you might imagine that the Archibald family are considering submitting a class action to the Court of Arbitration for Sport get the individual pursuit re-instated for Japan next summer.

“I enjoy the team element far, far more than individual competition,” admitted Katie, already with one Olympic and three World Championship golds to her name, only one of which has come in an individual event. “I find that really, really stressful.

“Look, I mean I love bunch racing but in terms of the way you prepare for a race et cetera I get far more pleasure from the team event,” she added. “Plus, team pursuit is really the backbone of the British Cycling programme. It is everything we train for. There is a pleasure in doing something for yourself, but that is very different to succeeding with somebody else, the pride in playing your part.”

As it happens, Katie’s partner for the Madison this time isn’t Emily Nelson – with whom she won the rainbow jersey in Apeldoorn 12 months previously, nor Elinor Baker – with whom she won the recent British nationals. It is her fellow Scot Neah Evans, whom she has never competed alongside. It all puts extra pressure on perfecting their tactics, not to mention that unique slingshot changeover.

“Twice I have planned to ride with Neah,” says Archibald. “Once was national championships two years ago, but I broke my collarbone a week before. The next one was at a UCI race in Italy and she broke her collarbone the day before! But we’ve done a lot of training with Team Scotland together. Hopefully that is enough.”

For once we are on the eve of a track cycling world championships and the younger Archibald sibling might not be the best story in her own household. The exploits of her big brother John, a late starter at the age of 28 who was still working in the family business 18 months ago, have become the stuff of legend.

Riding with upstart trade team Huub Wattbikes, John’s claim for inclusion in the British Cycling fold has become irresistible ever since he twice smashed the sea level individual pursuit record in the last few months. Were he to return home with World Championship gold, the family debrief – usually over a curry – would last long into the night.

While Katie admits it will be difficult watching her brother’s date with destiny, she also admits there were times that she considered taking matters into her own hands and trying to urge him to make more of his obvious talents in the sport sooner. “I will enjoy watching Laura [Kenny, who returns to the world championships in the omnium after the birth of her little boy], but I don’t think I’ll enjoy watching John,” she said. “When you are rooting for someone else so much that is a new sensation. This sounds horrible, but I suppose it means I just didn’t care enough about any of my other friends! You think ‘oh yes, I’m really invested in them’ but it is just different when it is your brother.”

As recently as this time last year, it was anybody’s guess whether John would go on to glory or simply go back to the family mattress shop. “Really you can trace John’s emergence back to the Commonwealth Games, the time he set there, and the medal he came back with,” said Katie, of John’s silver medal, acquired within minutes of her gold. “That was when the first whispers started – ‘what can he do with this?’

“He rode the Europeans in the summer time and that didn’t go well,” she added. “But he has just been getting better and better and better. He has just won the national champs in an amazingly fast time. He is now in a position where he now just has to hold onto that form for a few more days now.

“He has come from nowhere and it really is a good compliment to Scottish cycling, their perseverance for getting him on the track. He was essentially cleaning up on the domestic scene back home and had so many people trying to nudge him this way and that – saying ‘why aren’t you taking this seriously? ‘Why aren’t you taking your strengths to the next level? They took hold of him, got him to follow through with his Commonwealth ambition and that is what has spring-boarded him all the way to the Worlds. But I didn’t push him, he has that type of personality where it is very tempting to try to sort his life out for him. But he really doesn’t care … so I leave it to him.”

If getting updates on progress from Poland in the next few days isn’t the easiest task, the Scottish public thankfully will get plenty of chances to keep tabs on the Archibalds in the forthcoming weeks, months and years. Not only does the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome host a UCI World Cup in November, she will be competing - in a Scotland jersey - at the all-new women’s Tour of Scotland event on the road later this year and only last week Glasgow was announced as the venue for a new combined world championships in 2023.

“I am phenomenally excited about that,” says Katie. “People keep saying to me ‘but are you not going to be retired?’ and I’m saying ‘I bloody hope not’.”