Cooke Does Enough to Win World Cup

3 Sept 2006

Rotterdam Tour Women's World Cup Round number 11

Nicole Cooke (pictured earlier this season) shrugged off her nasty mid-week crash in the Holland Tour to secure the World cup title by taking fourth place at the penultimate round, the Rotterdam Tour. Cooke knew exactly what she had to do to secure the title and rode with her customary intelligence and guts to finish the job with a round of the series still to go - even the double points on offer at the final round are not enough for her leading rivals to snatch the title from her, such is the dominance on the Welsh rider.

Cooke came into the event with a significant lead, basically just needing to finish ahead of Judith Arndt (Ger) and Susanne Lungskog (Swe) to secure the title. Despite the fairly flat nature of the circuit, strong crosswinds caused a split in the 150 strong group after just 30km. A group of 17 was formed with Cooke accompanied by three of her Univega Team-mates.

T mobile had the eventual winner Ina Teutenberg and other riders in this group but not world cup chasing Arndt. After a furious chase a 12 strong group, including Arndt, made it up to the lead group. This group then stayed together to the finish.

After softening attacks by her team-mates, Cooke made a move for lone victory with 4 km to go. In a defiant chase, T mobile, spearheaded by Arndt, brought the rest of the group up to Cooke at just over 1km from the finish. In the end, Arndt ceded the overall World Cup win to Cooke by helping lead out Teutenberg for the win on the day.

Cooke was naturally pleased with the result:

"I am absolutely thrilled to win the World Cup. It was a fantastic performance by the whole team. It would have been nice to win today but the overall was far more important. I shall enjoy next week's final round in Germany, the pressure is now off me but we have the team win to secure ahead of T Mobile."

For further details see www.nicolecooke.com

for Women's World Cup see www.uci.ch

Results

1. Ina Teutenberg T Mobile(Ger) 3 hours 6min
2. Tanja Hennes Team BuitenPort (Ger) same Time
3. Kirsten Wild AA Drinks(Ned) same time
4. Nicole Cooke - Raleigh Univega Lifeforce (GBR) same time