Today Guardian newspaper :
Road racing has never been an exact science and never will be, but the British cycling performance director Dave Brailsford and his team have been working on it and it showed yesterday. When Nicole Cooke sprinted across the line to claim Britain's first medal of these Olympic Games, it not only marked the pinnacle of the Welsh woman's eight-year international career but was also the culmination of a meticulous planning process going back more than a year.
That planning went to one extreme that few cyclists have contemplated: a dress rehearsal on the road of the most likely scenario for a sprint finish, so that when Cooke arrived within sight of the line yesterday, she had in effect been through the sprint before. "We were trying to cover all options and we were hoping that exactly that would happen," said the women's road-team manager, Julian Winn.
What happened leading to that sprint was the dream scenario evoked in team meetings: a relatively calm race until the field arrived at the two circuits up to the Badaling fortress and down the hill again, a strong attack from Cooke's team-mate Emma Pooley at the bell to sow confusion in the field and tire out the opposition, and Cooke using her strength and extensive single-day racing experience to execute the coup de grace. That is straight out of most tactical manuals; not so the dress rehearsal of the finish, which was another example of the British cycling team's determination to leave no stone unturned.
"We did a lead-out on the hill on Thursday, the training day," said Winn, who was racing himself until only recently. "I led them out, then Emma picked up the tempo, Sharon Laws was on her wheel, so we had already rehearsed that finish. We knew the point, at 200 metres to go, where we wanted Nicole to go. We knew at what point the legs would be getting heavy."
The only moment of doubt - among those watching at least - came when Cooke emerged from the final corner a few lengths behind her four companions. Like the other British riders she had started the race using lightweight tyres, which they opted not to change when the rain started. The downside was that she could not lean her bike as far as usual on the last bend.
"We wanted to make sure she laid off coming into the final corner, but perhaps not that far," said Winn. "We were afraid someone might come down in front of her, so we told her to keep to the left. We knew she would chew them up after that."
There was equal precision in the attack from Pooley that proved the springboard to Cooke's race-winning move. "The plan was Emma would go three kilometres from the turnstiles on the last lap," said Winn. "As soon as she came into the road she was to attack as hard as she could to put the Germans on the defensive. It worked. Emma's attack was fully committed.
"Nicole could watch and wait because the other riders know what Emma can do on her own, so they were thinking, would she ride away or was she bluffing?
"We felt the Germans were the most dangerous and they were put on the defensive. One was using up all her energy chasing and Trixi Worrack, their best rider, was flapping."
Critically, the searing chase when the Germans responded to Pooley's attack left the big favourite, Marianne Vos of the Netherlands, without a team-mate to assist her once Cooke had escaped just over the top of the climb.
In every road race, there is a key moment when the winner has to make an instant commitment or opt to wait, and for Cooke that instant came when she joined the three women - Emma Johansson, Christiane Soeder and Linda Villumsen - who had just begun chasing the Italian Tatiana Guderzo after she escaped at the top of the climb. "I thought, 'Yes, we can stay away, these girls want to catch Guderzo so whatever happens we'll be going fast.' There was no decision, it was just, 'Yes, this is the time no.' "
This first Olympic gold in a road race for the national lottery-funded cycling squad vindicates the creation in May 2007 of "Team Cooke", an informal group including Brailsford, the psychologist Steve Peters, Winn, the performance manager Shane Sutton, the women's endurance coach Dan Hunt and the cyclist's father Tony. "It was like a working group trying to find out the best-case scenarios for getting me to the Olympics," she explained. "It's a team effort but it's not just the riders, the staff and back-up as well."
One aim was to ensure Cooke had the necessary support on the road, and here the team were helped by the rise of Pooley in 2007 and the discovery earlier this year of Sharon Laws, who was unlucky to crash twice here. Hence her glowing tributes afterwards to both team-mates.
Another crucial element was Cooke's willingness to adopt a new structure to her season, over-riding her competitive instincts and opting out of short-term success in lesser races to save her mental and physical energy for this single day. "I had tried the other route, racing all season, but got to major championships without full energy in the tank so why do the same thing if it had been proven not to work?" she said. "But it was a high-risk strategy because I was trying it for the first time. I stuck to the plan and I believed in it."
Chris Boardman, an individual pursuit gold medallist in 1992, once compared road racing to a lottery, in which a cyclist has only a few chances of taking a
winning ticket. The ultimate accolades will rightly go to the gold medallist herself, who showed incisiveness - in itself a sign that physically she was completely on top of matters - and courage exactly when it mattered. However, as she would be the first to admit, "Team Cooke" made the Welsh rider's chances of pulling out that ticket as good as was humanly possible.
Road racing has never been an exact science and never will be, but the British cycling performance director Dave Brailsford and his team have been working on it and it showed yesterday. When Nicole Cooke sprinted across the line to claim Britain's first medal of these Olympic Games, it not only marked the pinnacle of the Welsh woman's eight-year international career but was also the culmination of a meticulous planning process going back more than a year.
That planning went to one extreme that few cyclists have contemplated: a dress rehearsal on the road of the most likely scenario for a sprint finish, so that when Cooke arrived within sight of the line yesterday, she had in effect been through the sprint before. "We were trying to cover all options and we were hoping that exactly that would happen," said the women's road-team manager, Julian Winn.
What happened leading to that sprint was the dream scenario evoked in team meetings: a relatively calm race until the field arrived at the two circuits up to the Badaling fortress and down the hill again, a strong attack from Cooke's team-mate Emma Pooley at the bell to sow confusion in the field and tire out the opposition, and Cooke using her strength and extensive single-day racing experience to execute the coup de grace. That is straight out of most tactical manuals; not so the dress rehearsal of the finish, which was another example of the British cycling team's determination to leave no stone unturned.
"We did a lead-out on the hill on Thursday, the training day," said Winn, who was racing himself until only recently. "I led them out, then Emma picked up the tempo, Sharon Laws was on her wheel, so we had already rehearsed that finish. We knew the point, at 200 metres to go, where we wanted Nicole to go. We knew at what point the legs would be getting heavy."
The only moment of doubt - among those watching at least - came when Cooke emerged from the final corner a few lengths behind her four companions. Like the other British riders she had started the race using lightweight tyres, which they opted not to change when the rain started. The downside was that she could not lean her bike as far as usual on the last bend.
"We wanted to make sure she laid off coming into the final corner, but perhaps not that far," said Winn. "We were afraid someone might come down in front of her, so we told her to keep to the left. We knew she would chew them up after that."
There was equal precision in the attack from Pooley that proved the springboard to Cooke's race-winning move. "The plan was Emma would go three kilometres from the turnstiles on the last lap," said Winn. "As soon as she came into the road she was to attack as hard as she could to put the Germans on the defensive. It worked. Emma's attack was fully committed.
"Nicole could watch and wait because the other riders know what Emma can do on her own, so they were thinking, would she ride away or was she bluffing?
"We felt the Germans were the most dangerous and they were put on the defensive. One was using up all her energy chasing and Trixi Worrack, their best rider, was flapping."
Critically, the searing chase when the Germans responded to Pooley's attack left the big favourite, Marianne Vos of the Netherlands, without a team-mate to assist her once Cooke had escaped just over the top of the climb.
In every road race, there is a key moment when the winner has to make an instant commitment or opt to wait, and for Cooke that instant came when she joined the three women - Emma Johansson, Christiane Soeder and Linda Villumsen - who had just begun chasing the Italian Tatiana Guderzo after she escaped at the top of the climb. "I thought, 'Yes, we can stay away, these girls want to catch Guderzo so whatever happens we'll be going fast.' There was no decision, it was just, 'Yes, this is the time no.' "
This first Olympic gold in a road race for the national lottery-funded cycling squad vindicates the creation in May 2007 of "Team Cooke", an informal group including Brailsford, the psychologist Steve Peters, Winn, the performance manager Shane Sutton, the women's endurance coach Dan Hunt and the cyclist's father Tony. "It was like a working group trying to find out the best-case scenarios for getting me to the Olympics," she explained. "It's a team effort but it's not just the riders, the staff and back-up as well."
One aim was to ensure Cooke had the necessary support on the road, and here the team were helped by the rise of Pooley in 2007 and the discovery earlier this year of Sharon Laws, who was unlucky to crash twice here. Hence her glowing tributes afterwards to both team-mates.
Another crucial element was Cooke's willingness to adopt a new structure to her season, over-riding her competitive instincts and opting out of short-term success in lesser races to save her mental and physical energy for this single day. "I had tried the other route, racing all season, but got to major championships without full energy in the tank so why do the same thing if it had been proven not to work?" she said. "But it was a high-risk strategy because I was trying it for the first time. I stuck to the plan and I believed in it."
Chris Boardman, an individual pursuit gold medallist in 1992, once compared road racing to a lottery, in which a cyclist has only a few chances of taking a
winning ticket. The ultimate accolades will rightly go to the gold medallist herself, who showed incisiveness - in itself a sign that physically she was completely on top of matters - and courage exactly when it mattered. However, as she would be the first to admit, "Team Cooke" made the Welsh rider's chances of pulling out that ticket as good as was humanly possible.