"Dream big… there are no limits" – the 21-year-old who wants to be the first WorldTour or pro Continental para-cyclist

When Archie Atkinson crashed, one lap away from a gold medal in his first Paralympic Games, and metres away from breaking his own world record, his instinct was to quit. He left Paris with a silver medal around his neck, but it wasn’t until months later that he realised the scale of his achievement.

“For months, I would pick my medal up and either cry or hate [looking at] it,” he tells BikeRadar. “On the night I won it, I took it off and threw it!”

The gold medal had been within Atkinson’s grasp. Leading Slovakia’s Jozef Metelka by six seconds in the men’s C4 4,000m individual pursuit final at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, Atkinson’s bike slipped away from him as he approached the final lap, leaving the youngest member of Great Britain’s cycling squad – aged 20 at the time – face-down on the track of the Vélodrome National de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.

“The gold medal was 250m away from me,” says Atkinson ruefully. “I wanted to quit bikes. I felt like I’d let the country down. As a GB athlete, your goal is to win gold. Coming back with a silver medal felt like a failure.”

Back home in Stockport, it was a routine trip to the barber that helped Atkinson see his Paralympic medal in a new light. “[The barber] was really happy for me and wanted to see the medal, so I went home to get it,” says Atkinson. “When I was walking back to the barber’s, I put my hand in my pocket and felt it – that was the first time I smiled at it.”

Bouncing back

Atkinson took a four-month break following the Paralympics, returning to racing in May 2025 with little sense of his fitness or form – only to win his first UCI Para-Cycling Road World Cup in Italy.

A bronze medal in the road race followed at the UCI Para-Cycling Road World Championships in August, before Atkinson secured his third world title on the boards at October’s Para-Cycling Track World Championships.

Despite that impressive haul, Atkinson reflects on 2025 as a year of “ups and downs”. He started the season “wanting to win a lot off the back of the Games last year” – but, just as his season was reaching its crescendo, Atkinson caught Covid shortly before October’s track worlds, and he also broke his nose a week out from the event. Two silver medals, alongside his gold, left Atkinson wanting more.

Atkinson’s takeaway from 2025 – a “year of learning” – is clear. “Focus on the process, not the outcome,” he says. “My mentality is to win – and if I don’t win, I feel I’ve failed in my job. That’s always been my mentality, and always will be, but rather than focusing on that medal and that win, I need to focus on what leads up to it, rather than the podium itself.”

In memory of Magnus

Atkinson has wanted to be a professional cyclist since he was three years old. He briefly diverted his attention to football as a teenager, playing at a county level, but fell out of love with the sport.

“I started doing random 200km road rides off the back of zero training and thought, ‘Okay, maybe I do have some talent’,” says Atkinson. “I got put onto the regional academy off the back of a few road races, then went to a testing day for the para team.”

Atkinson’s power numbers revealed his potential and his path was set. His parents agreed to support his dream until he was 21 and he quickly “locked in”.

“I threw all of my eggs in that basket, quit school and focused on being a pro cyclist,” he says. “I knew that if I didn’t make it, then my dream would be over.”

Atkinson quickly accelerated through the ranks and was selected for his first UCI Para-Cycling Track World Championships in 2023, aged 19. On the eve of the event, Atkinson’s friend, Magnus White, was killed by a driver who hit the 17-year-old American rising star while he was on a training ride in Colorado.

“I found out through some messages through mates,” says Atkinson. Despite carrying that raw grief through the Glasgow worlds, Atkinson, who competes in the C4 category, won his first world title with gold in the scratch race.

“It drives me as an athlete, but it’s difficult sometimes,” says Atkinson, reflecting on Magnus’ death two years on. “Tomorrow [18 November] would have been his 20th birthday. It’s a weird feeling. There are some days when you lose all motivation. You get overwhelmed.

“But there are other days when you can’t let him down. He died pursuing his dream and I’m lucky enough to call this my job and live the dream we wanted so much. You want to keep his name and legacy alive.”

Dreaming big

Looking ahead to 2026, Atkinson’s objectives are clear. “I’d like to get a stripey jersey on the road,” he says, with the para-cycling road worlds in Huntsville, Alabama, in September front of mind. “I’ve not done that yet. That’s the big goal.”

On the track, Atkinson wants to win a third scratch race world title in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, in October, upgrade his 2025 silver medal in the elimination race to gold, and reclaim the individual pursuit title he last won in 2024.

Atkinson continues to chase glory on both the road and track, and he’s currently in talks with several able-bodied teams to ride with them for a few races in 2026 to gain experience.

“The end goal – and it’s a bit of a mad dream – is to be one of the first WorldTour or pro Continental para-cyclists,” he says. “If you’re an eight-year-old kid with cerebral palsy and you’re watching cycling, and you see a Paralympian on the TV racing next to Remco or Tadej, that’d be pretty special. They’ll think, ‘If they can do that, I can too’. You’d be pushing para-cycling to its limit.”

Atkinson, who has cerebral palsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism, continues to challenge misconceptions about para-cyclists. He’s often asked, ‘What’s your disability?’ “It’s not very visible,” he says.

“The annoying thing about para-cycling is that people think we’re heroes or more inspirational than Olympians. Sometimes it feels a bit patronising. We’re the same people; we’ve just got a leg missing or something not working correctly.”

The joy of cycling

Off the bike, Atkinson loves music (he plays the piano, guitar and harmonica), has a passion for history (“the World Wars and Vietnam era”) and loves Lego, but concedes that travelling with a Lego set to a training camp or an international event is rarely practical. “It’s normally Fortnite or Fifa,” he says.

Regardless of whether he’s training or competing, what hasn’t changed for Atkinson is his love of cycling. “I just love riding bikes. It’s the greatest invention ever,” he says. “Riding with your mates – there’s no feeling that matches it.”

For someone who gave himself until he was 21 to 'make it', Archie Atkinson has well and truly arrived, and is set to be a star of British cycling for years to come. His advice for young riders following in his pedal strokes? “Dream big,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what it is: just dream big. Go for it. There are no limits.”