Archibald will debut with Wiggle High5 at Tour de Yorkshire

Wiggle High5 announced Tuesday that Katie Archibald will make her debut with the team at the Tour de Yorkshire. The two-day race is held on May 3 and 4 in Great Britain, where Kirsten Wild will lead the team during a flat stage 1 and Elisa Longo Borghini will eye hilly stage 2.

Archibald, 24, has been concentrating her season on the track until now. She won the world title in the Madison and more recently won the gold medal in the Individual Pursuit at the Commonwealth Games.

"I didn't want to make a big deal of it [being my first race for the team] because it's May," Archibald said in a team press release. "I'm very much looking forward to it."

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Archibald rode in the first edition of the Tour de Yorkshire, when it was an 80km circuit race around the city of York, and she won the sprinter's jersey.

This year's Tour de Yorkshire overlaps with the first two stages of the men's race. Stage 1 will be 132.5km from Beverley to Doncaster and is expected to be one for the sprinters. The team will focus their efforts on leading out Wild for the opener. Stage 2 is 124km from Barnsley to Ilkley and caters to the climbers, so Longo Borghini will focus on that stage.

"It's always funny looking at profiles and things because it really makes a big difference whether you're looking at a Spanish climb compared a British one," Archibald said. "It'll be narrow roads, especially through Yorkshire; narrow and steep, and a lot of up down, up down. Instead of glorious, Alp, threshold climbs it's going to be punchy, into-the-red stuff.

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