Nicole Denise Cooke (born 13 April 1983) is a Welsh former professional racing cyclist and Commonwealth, Olympic and world road race champion. She was the first British cyclist to win a Grand Tour, which she achieved at the Giro d'Italia Femminile in 2004. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Cooke became the first British woman to win an Olympic gold medal in cycling, and the first Welsh woman to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event.
Aged 16, Cooke became the youngest ever winner at the British National Road Championships in 1999, and later won four junior world titles. She began riding professionally in 2002, winning the road race at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and in 2003, secured the overall UCI Road World Cup title, the first Briton to do so. In 2004, she won the Giro d'Italia Femminile, and the following year, won a silver medal in the road race at the UCI Road World Championships. She claimed a bronze medal in the road race at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, and secured back-to-back Grande Boucle victories in 2006 and 2007. Cooke won the road race at both the 2008 Summer Olympics and 2008 UCI Road World Championships, becoming the first woman to achieve this double in the same year. Cooke retired from cycling on 14 January 2013 at the age of 29. She has been a critic of doping in sport, and has been a proponent for gender equality in cycling.
Life and career Early life and beginnings in cycling Nicole Denise Cooke was born in Swansea on 13 April 1983. She lived in Wick, Vale of Glamorgan, and attended Brynteg Comprehensive School in Bridgend. During her childhood, Cooke raced her father and brother daily on their five-mile round-trip ride to her school. The family went on cycling holidays, where they shared tandem bicycles. She began cycling seriously at age 11, trained at Cardiff Ajax Cycling Club, and entered both the under-12 Welsh and British Cyclo Cross Championships. Lacking local competitions to enter, Cooke travelled to the Netherlands to race aged 12, and took her O-level's and A-levels a year early to fit around her cycling aspirations.
At 16, she won her first senior national title at the 1999 British National Road Race Championships, becoming the youngest ever winner of the race. At 17, she was ineligible to compete for Great Britain at the 2000 Summer Olympics due to her age. British Cycling chose not to make an appeal to the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the sport's governing body, and Cooke said as the national champion that the decision made no sense. She won the senior women's title at the 2001 British National Cyclocross Championships, and won her second senior title at the British National Road Race Championships that same year. She won four UCI World Championship Junior titles, the road race in 2000, and the treble of mountain bike, time trial, and road race in 2001. Cooke was awarded the 2001 Bidlake Memorial Prize for outstanding performance or contribution to British cycling. Cooke was offered a place on British Cycling's Olympic Podium Programme, but she rejected the opportunity as it centred around track cycling which she did not wish to participate in.
International cycling career 2002–2007 Cooke rode professionally with the Italian Deia-Pragma-Colnago team for the 2002 season, while also joining British Cycling's Elite programme which allowed her to attend training camps and races with the British team. She based herself in Treviso, Italy, where she shared a house with Australian rider Rochelle Gilmore, and learned to speak Italian. That year, Cooke won the Ronde van Westerbeek, the Trofeo Citta Di Rosignano, and the Memorial Pasquale di Carlo.
At the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, Cooke missed out on a medal in the time trial after finishing tenth, with her coach Shane Sutton stating that she was emotionally upset and chronically fatigued after the race. She had trained at a very high intensity in the build-up and was told to rest for six days. Cooke then achieved victory in the road race, winning on the roads of Rivington to earn Wales second-ever cycling gold in the Commonwealth Games, and the first since Louise Jones in 1990. Due to financial issues, the Deia-Pragma-Colnago team failed to pay wages to Cooke and some of her colleagues. The team seized hrt racing bicycle from a vehicle, and her victory at the subsequent Ronde Van Westerbeek was achieved on a borrowed bike. Cooke finished runner-up in the BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year competition.
In 2003, Cooke rode for Ausra Gruodis-Safi. That year, she won La Flèche Wallonne Féminine, the Amstel Gold Race, the GP de Plouay and the GP San Francisco. She secured the 2003 UCI Women's Road World Cup titlethe youngest rider to ever win the competition and the first Briton to do so. She hit a stationary motorbike in June at the Tour du Grand Montréal, breaking her collarbone, as well as suffering an injury to her knee. Three weeks later, she crashed again at the Giro de Trentino. Cooke came third in the road race at the UCI Road World Championships in Hamilton. After catching France's Jeannie Longo near the end of the race, Cooke was edged out by Sweden's Susanne Ljungskog and Mirjam Melchers of the Netherlands. At the end of the year, she was voted BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year.
Cooke undertook a spell of rehabilitation in an attempt to cure a knee problem and ultimately underwent surgery in May 2004. At the end of June, in her first race in eight months, she won her fifth British road-race title. The following month, Cooke won the Giro d'Italia Femminile, becoming the youngest winner, and the first British cyclist, male or female, to win a Grand Tour. She took the race lead after winning a climb at Magreglio and successfully defended the pink jersey on the final stage. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, she placed fifth in the women's road race; Cooke lost time following a final-lap collision with a barrier and finished just behind bronze-medallist Olga Slyusareva of Russia. She also came 19th in the road time trial.
In 2005, she won La Flèche Wallonne Féminine, the GP Wallonie, the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, and the Trofeo Citta di Rosignano. At the Tour of Flanders, Cooke was one of a group of 20 riders who took a wrong turn on the course. As a result, the points accrued in the race were annulled. She came second in both the Primavera Rosa, and the 2005 World Championships. In the latter, she was beaten by half a bike length by Regina Schleicher of Germany. At the end of 2005, she joined Swiss-based team Univega Pro-Cycling moving to Lugano, Switzerland, in 2006, where she still lived as of March 2012.
In December that year, she broke her collarbone during qualifying for the points race at the UCI Track World Cup event in Manchester. After recovering, Cooke won bronze in the road race at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. Racing as the sole Welsh entrant, she finished behind Australians Natalie Bates and Oenone Wood. In her autobiography, she addressed the decision by the Welsh Cycling Union (WCU) to enter her with no teammates, writing that: "the WCU had gifted Australia, Canada, England and New Zealand my head on a plate". The WCU said that steps had been taken to ensure that multiple Welsh riders would be eligible to compete at the next Commonwealth Games.
On 1 August 2006, Cooke reached number one on the UCI's women's world road race rankings. No other British rider had ever reached the top-20 prior to her. She secured the overall World Cup title for a second time, after winning three World Cup races in the season – La Flèche Wallonne Féminine, the Ladies Golden Hour, and the Castilla y Leon. Cooke won the 2006 Grande Boucle stage race by over six minutes. She placed first in the prologue time trial, before extending her lead by over four minutes with victory in a mountain stage featuring a climb of Mont Ventoux. A fifth place on stage five secured her overall win. Cooke won four stages and the overall title at the Thüringen-Rundfahrt stage race, and claimed victory at the Magali Pache time trial. She came third in the road race at the 2006 World Championships in Salzburg, losing out to Marianne Vos and Trixi Worrack in a sprint finish.
In 2007, Cooke won the Geelong Tour, before achieving victories at the Geelong World Cup, and the Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders for Women), both part of the 2007 UCI Women's Road World Cup. These wins helped Cooke set a new record in the UCI's women's world road race rankings for the biggest gap in points between the first and second-placed cyclists. She won the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, stage two of the GP Costa Etrusca, and successfully defended her Grande Boucle title. In the latter, she took the race lead on stage three, and won the overall title ahead of Switzerland's Priska Doppmann after finishing second on the final stage in the Pyrenees.
A knee injury sustained prior to the final race of the 2007 World Cup, the Rund um die Nürnberger Altstadt, hindered Cooke in the defence of her title, with Dutch rider Vos winning the final race and Cooke finishing 34th. Cooke ended second to Vos in the overall World Cup standings. The injury forced her to miss the 2007 World Championships in Stuttgart. Cooke later said in an interview in 2008 that she had considered quitting cycling due to the injury. Her wellbeing had suffered, and she began "hating" the sport. Cooke was helped by her bike mechanic who recommended seeing Dr Fabio Bartolucci; he later started coaching her.
2008: Olympic and World success
Cooke joined Team Halfords Bikehut for 2008. The team was formed by Dave Brailsford with the aim of developing British cyclists with medal-winning potential. Cooke was at the forefront of those ambitions with the forthcoming Olympics a major target. She finished 20th at the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, 16th at the Ronde van Vlaanderen, 12th at the Magali Pache time trial, and eighth at La Flèche Wallonne. She also placed third at the Grande Boucle. Cooke stated that she was happy with her form ahead of the upcoming Olympic Games, saying she was intentionally riding a light schedule with the aim of peaking in the summer. Her first victory of the year came at the Tour de l'Aude, in which she rode with the Great Britain national team. She secured the first stage, and finished fourth overall. In June, Cooke won the National Road Race Championship for an eighth consecutive time.
At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Cooke won gold in the women's road racethe 200th gold for Great Britain at an Olympic Games. She formed part of a five-women breakaway, and beat Emma Johansson and Tatiana Guderzo in a sprint at the end of the race. Her gold was the first by a Welsh Olympian since equestrian Richard Meade in 1972, the first individual gold medal for a female Welsh Olympian, and the first Olympic gold medal in any cycling discipline by a British female cyclist. Cooke then finished 15th in the time-trial, over two minutes behind the gold medallist.
At the 2008 World Championships, Cooke became the first cyclist, male or female, of any nation, to become the road race world champion and Olympic gold medallist in the same year. The race in Italy culminated in a sprint where she overcame Vos and Judith Arndt in a sprint finish. The three medallists were part of a five-rider breakaway that attacked on the final lap. Cooke was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours. She was awarded the Transworld Sport Female Athlete of the Year, the Pat Besford award for 'Performance of the Year' by the Sports Journalists' Association, and the Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year for her achievements in 2008. Cooke was also a nominee for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. In October that year, Cooke's book, Cycle for life was published. It offered advice to anyone taking up the sport.
Later career: 2009–2012