Nicole used to ride her bike to school. This stuff pays off, ladies and gentlemen:
Britain's Olympic cycling champion Nicole Cooke began honing her fitness from the age of 11 when she would race her father twice daily on the seven-mile trip to and from school.Read more in the Telegraph: Beijing Olympics: Champion Nicole Cooke's childhood training secrets.
The young Miss Cooke and her father shunned the bus to dash from their home to school, where Tony Cooke taught physics.
The unusual training quickly paid off and Miss Cooke, now 25, publicly announced her life's ambition, and her talent, after winning the Welsh cyclo-cross championship in 1994.
She beat everyone in her age group - including the boys - then promptly announced in a live television interview: "I want to win a gold medal at the Olympics."
Three Americans raced this morning in Beijing: Kristin Armstrong, who placed 25th 43 seconds behind Cooke after crashing early in the race; 33rd place Amber Neben (who lost her chain of all things!); and Christine Thorburn. Thorburn was asked to reel in Russian Natalia Boyarskaya, but the effort spent her. "Christine did what we asked her to do," U.S. coach Jim Miller said of Thorburn's effort to reel in Boyarskaya. "She did a great job."
- Cycling News: Britain's Cooke fulfils her Olympic destiny; Silver and bronze for Johansson and Guderzo
- See much more at Cyclodro.me.
Elsewhere:
- Learn more about Nicole Cook at her website.
- Silver medalist Emma Johannsson's website. who represents Sweden.
- Tatiana Guderzo of Italy apparently doesn't have a website, but here's her Wikipedia entry.
- Kristin Armstrong's website.
- Amber Neben's website.
- Christine Thorburn, who is one of the cyclists from the SF Bay Area, is a physician and is apparently too busy to have a website :-)
Next up: Women's road cycling -- individual time trial. Tuesday night, August 12 at 8:30 PM.
...i didn't know that about nicole cook & doesn't that particular bit of info make you smile for the deserving woman...
ReplyDeleteShe definitely deserved the win and what a great win it was. After falling off the small lead group near the finish for a short time, she charged back up and kept right on going. Even with Guderzo right on her wheel near the line, Cooke looked unstoppable. It was a great race and I think she is a great role model for young female cyclists. My 8 year old daughter watched it with me and was really excited after the race (which of course made me happy)
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and the commuting bit makes it even cooler. Congrats to Nicole.
that last stretch was pretty bad ass.
ReplyDeleteI agree she earned that well.
I thought Gaderzo had it and she choked, man it was pouring and they made it seem so easy.
awesome last 150mts, was divine & truly inspirational ;)
I feel badly about it because I wanted to catch this race, but I fell asleep at 9:30 Saturday night and missed the whole thing! I had a lot going on Sunday anyway. It sounded like a good race.
ReplyDeleteI plan to catch the time trial Tuesday night.
And yes, the Great Britian jersey crushes the USA jersey like a grape.
ReplyDelete