The Breakaway by Nicole Cooke

Author:Nicole Cooke [Cooke, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471130366
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Riding Under Athena’s Gaze

I had a week in Italy, enjoying the status of winning the Giro before heading back to Wales to get my knee checked. I was in such good form that all I needed was to maintain my health through the next few weeks. I had beaten the world’s best in Italy; bring on Athens.

When I got back to Wales, I was invited to BBC Wales who wanted to discuss how they were going to cover me at the Olympics. They were probably trying to make up for the fact that they had given me no coverage during the Giro d’Italia. BBC Wales later purchased some RAI footage of the race and Wales Today ran a small section in a regional sports programme, but for the nationwide BBC I did not exist. However, now BBC London wanted to give me a camera so that I could produce a video diary for the breakfast programme. They also thought it would be a good idea to cover Mum and Dad out in Athens as well. This synthesised my problem. In Italy, I was greatly appreciated and their sincerity was touching, but women’s cycling was a financial basket case and there were no sponsorship deals for foreign riders in Italy. Maurizio was able to pay me but my career was going to be short, and if I did slightly better than break even, I would have done far better than most other female cyclists. In the UK, my profile was controlled, as 2003 had shown so clearly, not by my performances but by cycling journalists, British Cycling and the BBC.

The twin themes that run through my cycling career in relation to the English-speaking cycling journalists of the time are their failure to question the Lance story and their sexism in reporting. On the former point, only David Walsh and Paul Kimmage come out with any credit. Week after week, all that Cycling Weekly could put out were magazines full of eulogies to Lance.

While satellite TV showed plenty of men’s cycling, my only race on TV each year in the UK, and therefore my only chance to shine, was the World Championships. But there were two problems. Firstly, I was effectively riding alone in a team sport against very strong teams, and secondly was the fact that the male commentators never followed the women’s sport on a regular basis, and so instead of being able to instantly recognise riders and describe the action and finer tactical points, they wasted time trying to identify riders from glimpses of their numbers. To get around this uncomfortable unfamiliarity with the riders, the commentators tended to talk about something they knew about – the men’s race coming up next. Beyond TV, the British Cycling press office remained in the hands of Philip Ingham. The shadows of events in 1999 would still be dark four years after Athens; I could not expect fair coverage from that source. A World Cup win might take the headlines for

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