itisaboutthebike said:
NC - she's done a lot for UK(and female ) cycling. But she's not really a complete rider(yet), in the way that say Beryl Burton was. Like Cav she has a good sprint that can win races - if she's up there at the finish. But she can't TT.
Well that is the understatement of the century (or at least the day).
In the context of modern, professional(-ish) women's road racing, Nicole Cooke
is more or less a complete rider. The stage races around today weren't around in Beryl Burton's days - we will never know how good she may have been, but the demanding international road season means Cooke doesn't really need to go to the track or time-trialling to prove herself. Having said that, she was the national points race champion a few years back, I think. And has won the national road title nine of the last ten years, so she is catching up with Burton there.
You say, "she has a good sprint that can win races - if she's up there at the finish" as though to play it down. Surely the impressive thing is that so often she
is up there at the finish. The comparison with Mark Cavendish is ridiculous. Cavendish has won some medium-sized classics and lots of stages - mostly sprints with the odd prologue here and there - plus world madison gold. Cooke has won the Olympic road race, the Worlds road race, the Grande Boucle twice (plus third place this year), the Giro once, the World Cup twice (via - I think - eight victories in major classics, including the Tour of Flanders, GP de Plouay and three times the Flèche Wallonne) plus at hatful of other classics (twice the Trofeo Alfredo Binda) and stages in smaller races.
She can win sprints and mountain stages (Ventoux/Madonna del Ghisallo, plus came second in the winning break over the Tourmalet and Aspin a couple of years ago and again at Sestriere this year), as well as all the terrain in between where she is really at her best. And she
can time-trial. She's not quite an A-grader, but she won the time-trials en route to both of her Boucle wins, and even though she lost a fair chunk in this year's time-trial she still came third. She also won the time trial in the Thüringen Rundfahrt in 2006. Hell, she was fifth at the World's TT in Salzburg a couple of years ago - only a minute down on Kristin Armstrong.
Nicole Cooke is already one of the all-time great female cyclists. The only thing we don't know yet is how great. I would say she deserves SPOTY (heh) for the accumulation of her success alone - this year is just the gold-medal, rainbow-jersey wearing cherry on top.
