Nicole was never, ever, never in a million years going to be "the chosen one" for British Cycling. She had had to achieve far too much of her career without them directing everything, she could never be trusted to stay "on message". Pooley likewise. Now, ironically, Lizzie can be pretty outspoken herself, and has had plenty to say about British Cycling in the last 18 months that is far from positive, but certainly everything I've seen from British Cycling in the last five years has said to me that Lizzie is the one BC want to lead the road women, and has been all along, regardless of whether that's Lizzie's goal or not. Therefore, this latest detail from Nicole is neither surprising nor really a revelation, but it does fill in some of the blanks for sure. The way they've tried to airbrush Nicole from history is patronising at best and malicious at worst. When a BC spokesperson described Armitstead's rainbow jersey victory in Richmond as "a breakthrough moment for women's cycling in the UK", it made me pretty angry, and I can absolutely understand if Nicole's blood boiled just a bit upon hearing that, considering only six years earlier, and not even before the start of the whole cycling revolution in the UK, Nicole had won the Olympic AND World Championships road races the same season, then seen her team fold saying (almost in these exact words) "mission accomplished", and devoting their funding instead to the much more pressing issue of making sure Rob Hayles got to start the domestic crit circuit.
Of course, when the current hydra-headed behemoth that is British Cycling and its offshoots (including Sky) became the centrepiece of the Olympic revolution, Lizzie was just starting out (going with Cervélo in 2009, where she showed her best stage racing credentials of her entire career, winning the maglia bianca at the Giro Donne), and was clearly groomed to be the next star. This is evidenced to this very day in the way that the commentators with an "in" at British Cycling make absolutely certain to refer to her at all times as a "lovable, hard-working Yorkshire lass". Always "lass", never "girl", never "woman". It's affectionate, it's colloquial. Makes her easier to identify with, supposedly. But the presentation of Lizzie that BC favours is not always in alignment with the presentation Lizzie herself has wanted to present, and it sure as hell isn't in line with the perception of a lot of people who follow women's cycling - and clearly, as we found out when we discovered her overturned ban for the missed tests, a lot of the péloton too - and I can certainly understand if that rubbed Cooke up the wrong way too. When Pooley announced her intention to return for Rio, the first thing Sutton said - the very first thing - was that she would "add another strong engine to support Lizzie". There was never, not for a second, any consideration of a flexible strategy, of any consideration of who would be strongest on the day, who the course suited, etc.. Just "oh good, some more legs to help Armitstead".
So the 2011 tactics story doesn't surprise me at all. Even if you could say - and certainly wouldn't be unjustified in doing so - that the parcours at København meant that Cooke likely couldn't have done any better than she did and that Lizzie's capability from a partly reduced sprint would have made her the better option to begin with. But while I accept that Nicole did certainly play a role in why BC thought her hard to work with, and could be selfish and bolshy, if they'd actually dealt with the tactics beforehand and made it clear what the plan was, rather than leaving the women to it, then changing the plan at the last minute then insulting them for not pulling off the win, maybe she wouldn't have been in such a position. Ironic, then, that Lizzie has been pretty scathing in her opinions regards Shane Sutton in light of the last few months, and has been far from supportive of the system that, on the face of it, you would have thought had benefited her in prioritising her ahead of Cooke and Pooley who, at least at the time, were more proven commodities.
What this really brings to a head, however, is the scale of just how much the women were marginalized, and just how much of the funding that came - albeit indirectly - from public money for the national sporting organ that is British Cycling, was being siphoned off and redirected towards a men's team that already benefits from a much bigger budget than all but one other commercially-sponsored team. And the implication that Cookson, in his role at the time, would have been complicit in this is pretty damning, especially when he happily glosses over such things as there being nothing to see (and especially at the same time as the national race of the country he brought the Worlds to, that he described as an "emerging market" for the sport to cover for inadequate medical provisions, riders passing out and vomiting due to heat, dour racing and no fans, is cancelled due to lack of support). So what exactly did Cope do to justify the money he was paid as a women's coach? It sure as hell doesn't sound like he did any coaching of the women. He supposedly took his role so seriously that, if you take his statements at face value (which we clearly shouldn't) he had no idea where his star riders would be (meeting Emma Pooley in the French Alps when she was racing in the Basque Country), or even what races they would be entering (meeting Nicole Cooke at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, which doesn't even have a women's race). I've been willing to buy the latter as poor communication as it's between Flèche Wallonne and the GP Elsy Jacobs so Cooke may have been in the vicinity for training purposes, but nevertheless, he's admitted to ferrying stuff for Team Sky at LBL, so Nicole may be able to fill us in a bit more on that one too.
If Cooke is to be taken at face value - and we do know that since British Cycling have screwed her over time and again, we do have to accept that this may colour her standpoint - Cope was paid to coach the women, but ignored the two most prominent women in British Cycling time and again to instead spend a whole month doing motorpacing training - on BC's dime - for Wiggins, and on at least two occasions to ferret substances - whether suspect or not is almost irrelevant at this point - around Europe for a professional men's team that's supposed to be funded commercially. At this point, we're seeing a very clear, very bright image of the culture at BC and where the road women fit into their masterplan, which is to say as nothing more than an opportunity to pilfer some funds from and get some more complicit staff on the payroll without ringing too many alarm bells or increasing the Sky budget.
Oh, and as if to top it off, the internal enquiry into sexism at British Cycling didn't even bother contacting Emma Pooley for her opinion... so how are we meant to take its conclusions any more seriously than the other internal enquiry, into what Cope was doing with the now infamous package, that didn't bother to consult anybody capable of reading a race calendar?
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