Great Britain’s women are chasing a fifth consecutive team pursuit title at the Track World Championships in Paris this week but Katie Archibald knows victory is anything but a formality.

It is more than four years since Britain’s women last lost a team pursuit — at the Track World Cup in Cali, Colombia in December 2010 — and their dominance shows no sign of abating after the addition last year of an extra rider and kilometre.

Britain won five of the six world titles available with three riders over three kilometres — silver in 2010 the anomaly — and in Colombia last February won the first title with four riders over 4km.

It seems whatever the combination, Britain’s thirst for victory remains and it is the internal competition spurring them on as much as rivals from elsewhere.

Archibald, who came into the line-up last year and became Scotland’s first female track cycling world champion, said: “It makes it seem like it’s easy and it’s definitely going to happen.

“I’ve had a few people saying: ‘Are you looking forward to going out and winning worlds?’ as though it’s a given, which it’s very, very far from.

“That’s a bit scary. But it does give you confidence knowing that the other teams are more scared of you than you are of yourself.

“It’s pretty daunting, the expectation that comes with it.”

The 20-year-old from Milngavie, near Glasgow, is in a five-rider squad which includes Joanna Rowsell and her fellow Olympic champion Laura Trott, Elinor Barker and Ciara Horne.

Horne is the only member of the group yet to win a world title.

The unbeaten run inevitably leads to a question of when the first defeat will come.

Archibald admits that prospect has come up among the team but not to the extent that they want it to happen.

“It’s a tricky thought and one that’s run through our conversations, more jokingly than serious,” she added.

“You’d have to be a bit unstable to want to lose, but if we had to lose, you want to get it done soon, before Rio.

“We just work on our training, work on our side of it and hope we will go unbeaten forever and ever and ever.”