Nicole Cooke consdering retirement.

[mountainrman]

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/535384/cooke-to-call-it-a-day.html

So sad. Nicole was a real pleasure to watch - I saw her at the commonwealths live , the agression , the fall only a couple of K from the finish in Rivington close to where I live, then getting back on ,and catching them all to medal.

Her olympic medal was a treat to watch. Our sport as it should be.

It seems to me she never recovered from the failure of vision one, which I am inclined to believe she would never have attempted had women's racing been properly rewarded.

So sad - for me at least she will be missed.

 

[wilts rover]

The saddest thing is that this has hardly been picked up by the national (UK)media at all, well not at all. Bradley Wiggins gets knocked off his bike and there are questions in parliament, Victoria Pendleton goes dancing, Ed Clancy and Jo Rowsell get a radio show but Nicole Cooke, who's she?

Of all that British riders have done in the past few years its Nicole's Beijing ride that is my overiding memory, yes we can really do it.....

I hope she does what she wants to do and not what other people are pressuring her to do, she deserves that.

 

[Boardslide]

The saddest thing is that this has hardly been picked up by the national (UK)media at all, well not at all. Bradley Wiggins gets knocked off his bike and there are questions in parliament, Victoria Pendleton goes dancing, Ed Clancy and Jo Rowsell get a radio show but Nicole Cooke, who's she?

Of all that British riders have done in the past few years its Nicole's Beijing ride that is my overiding memory, yes we can really do it.....

I hope she does what she wants to do and not what other people are pressuring her to do, she deserves that.

It's a shame nobody seems to remember Nicole was the only British rider in Europe for years doing it on her own not like the load of prima dona's we have now. As you say it's a shame the papers have ignored this story but when Emma Pooley was threatening to retire it was all over the news.

 

[mountainrman]

It's a shame nobody seems to remember Nicole was the only British rider in Europe for years doing it on her own not like the load of prima dona's we have now. As you say it's a shame the papers have ignored this story but when Emma Pooley was threatening to retire it was all over the news.

I once heard that she had some kind of falling out with either British Cycling or Dave Brailsford or both, which is why she was an outcast. Does anyone know why?

She barely got a mention in the olympic coverage and, worse than that , when she had a problem before Box Hill as the heat came on not one of the team came back to help her get back , indeed the cameras barely noticed.

 

[MatParker117]

I once heard that she had some kind of falling out with either British Cycling or Dave Brailsford or both, which is why she was an outcast. Does anyone know why?

She barely got a mention in the olympic coverage and, worse than that , when she had a problem before Box Hill as the heat came on not one of the team came back to help her get back , indeed the cameras barely noticed.

Lizzie Armistead felt that Cooke abandoned her at the 2011 World's when she crashed. Armistead was the leader for Team GB in Copenhagen.

 

[mountainrman]

Lizzie Armistead felt that Cooke abandoned her at the 2011 World's when she crashed. Armistead was the leader for Team GB in Copenhagen.

Thanks - but I assumed it long predated that. As far as I am aware Cooke's pedigree was considerably better on the road certainly up till 2010, so it begs the question as to why Armistead was chosen as leader, which I thought was a symptom of a longer standing problem rather than the cause of it.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Cooke has long been considered hard to work with, perhaps a result of her having been out there in Europe doing it her own way for years as opposed to the more organised, structured BC set-up. She kicked up a fuss about the nationals in 2010 because of the Cervélo girls not chasing each other and making her do the work, meaning she didn't get the national jersey for the first time in a decade. She's also had her fair share of terrible luck - the signing for Equipe Nürnberger Versicherung just before the sponsors pulled the plug and the replacement sponsors (Skyter Shipping) were a bunch of fly-by-night luxury yacht merchants who left the team at the eleventh hour, leaving them scrambling for a sponsor. Eventually the team owner and his son kept the team going out of their own pockets, but understandably, expenses like the salaries of former World Champions like Amber Neben and Nicole became too much and she was reduced to a national team wherever BC were able to enter one, mostly consisting of her and a bunch of willing but at-that-point-not-yet-ready-for-the-top-level youngsters (some of whom, such as Lucy Martin and Emma Trott, have now become top riders themselves).

However, it is pretty plain to see that something is amiss with Nicole lately. From 2005 to 2008 she was one of the world's top riders; from 2009 to 2010 she still was, but a variety of circumstances meant she wasn't having the same impact (2009 being the trouble surrounding Vision-1, 2010 being the search for invites and the inexperienced support at the GB national team). 2011 was a bit of a down year, apart from that Worlds performance which rescued it, but we can easily chalk that one up to a stacked roster at MCipollini and a few inopportune crashes.

However, in 2012 she ranked 131st in the world on CQ ranking. This is not what we are used to from Nicole. She had a good calendar, riding Energiewacht, Exergy, Emakumeen Bira, Trentino, the Giro Donne, the Trophée d'Or and the Giro della Toscana as well as most of the World Cup events. Something was clearly wrong.