Cooke Rediscovers the Fire in Time for London

Emblazoned on the white saddle of Beijing gold medallist Nicole Cooke’s bike is a fiery red dragon, the symbol of the road racer’s beloved Wales.

Since that golden triumph in 2008 in the torrential rain beneath the Great Wall of China, the first of what would end up being 19 gold medals for Team GB, Cooke has endured her trials and tribulations.

In 2009 she formed her own women’s team, Vision 1, but the project collapsed during the summer after a lack of sponsorship. Then, last year, she was due to race for a German team, only to be told three months before the start of the racing season that no sponsorship deal had been signed and that her contract was null and void. A court case followed, which she won, but it was hardly conducive to remaining on top of the road racing world.

Now, however, with the London Olympics a little over a year to go, and a gold medal to defend, the fire breathing out of that dragon’s mouth appears to have returned to Cooke as well, older and wiser for the past two years, and more pumped than ever to get back to what she does best.

“I’ve learnt a lot about myself since Beijing,” she admits, when we meet in Switzerland where she is based on the Swiss-Italian border, a 50 minute drive from the Milan headquarters of her new Mario Cipollini-Giordana team, headed up by the famous Italian sprinter of the 1990’s.

“In particular what my strengths and weaknesses are, how you must play to your strengths and focus on one thing at a time. I’ve had a massive reality check over the past couple of years. I used to think I was invincible. I was a winner and everything I did won. I still have massive confidence in myself as a racer, and now a fresh perspective on life as well. The fire’s returned to my belly, for sure.”

The creation of her own team seemed a natural evolution after claiming gold in Beijing. “I had the platform and the opportunity to do so but I soon realised, in trying to combine directing and developing the team, and also racing, that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I threw more energy into my life off the bike than on it. The stress played its part in my falling ill, and of course it impacted on my performance in the saddle. I saw it as a failure on my part, and this was something I hadn’t been used to at all.

“Then, last year, the management of the German team signed up a 12-strong women’s team without signing a sponsors’ contract. When they broke the news to me about the sponsor falling through I assumed they’d honour my contract but they didn’t. The other riders either joined new teams or just walked away. I was alone in taking them to court. Although I won and had some of my contract paid up I was disappointed that the others didn’t join me and really take the team to the cleaners in the courts. I found that aspect quite sad.”

But then this is typical Cooke, the girl who went to Italy aged just 18 to launch her professional racing career, and who has pretty much done it her way ever since. Her haul of world, Commonwealth and of course Olympic titles has more than vindicated the 28-year-old’s steely, single-minded dedication to her sport, and even during all the adversity of the past two years, she was still a wheel away from winning gold in last year’s world championships – she finished fourth – and in the Delhi Commonwealths where she finished fifth.

“As disappointed as I was to be so near to a medal I also found encouragement,” the Swansea-born, Lugano-based star admits. “To be that close with the poor preparation I’d had told me that there’s plenty of potential for more success, and with London next year I’m setting all my focus on seeing if I can win a second gold medal as the defending champion.”

That first gold medal almost never happened because Cooke was on the verge of quitting her sport with a knee injury in late 2007/early 2008 that refused to go away. “I told my parents that I was about to call it a day,” she recalls.

“I saw no point in trying to race at the Olympics without being 100% fit. But then, in May, it began to clear up and for the first time in eight months I began to feel fast, strong and fit. It was cutting it close – the Beijing Games were only three months away – but it was just long enough to get me to the race and then it fell nicely into my lap.

“Winning Olympic gold is the absolute pinnacle for me, even though every year I have some major road races to compete in and the world championships, so the big question to myself was could I find the motivation to go for a second gold in my home country. The last two years of utter frustration have certainly helped me to find it in spades.”

With a team that is likely to also feature Olympic silver medallist time triallist Emma Pooley, and the increasingly impressive Lizzie Armitstead, Cooke is convinced that a British winner, and preferably her, will be very close to finishing down London’s the Mall in first place.

“If we can ride a race without any inner conflict, maximise our potential and then one of us can deal with whatever is thrown up then it’s going to take an awesome team to beat us. I happen to believe that both the women’s and the men’s, with Mark Cavendish, have got as good a chance as you can have in an event as random as the road race.”

Before this comes a whole summer of racing for Cooke, starting on Thursday in Italy and culminating with the world championships in Copenhagen in September, a title she has not won since 2008 when she became the first and only woman to win both Olympic and world gold in the same year.

“I can’t wait,” she insists. “I haven’t felt this good about racing for a long, long time.”   

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