2008: Olympic and World Success
Cooke joined Team Halfords Bikehut for 2008. Her first victory of 2008 was the Tour de l'Aude, taking the first stage and finishing fourth overall. On 28 June, Cooke won her ninth national road race champion title, and her eighth consecutive win.
Cooke represented Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics in the Women's Road Race where she won the gold on 10 August 2008, the 200th gold for Great Britain in the Modern Olympic Games. and the first Road Race Gold Medal for Great Britain in this discipline.
She became the first cyclist, male or female, to become the road race World Champion and Olympic gold medalist in the same year. An eventful race in Varese, Italy lasted 3 hours 42 minutes and 11 seconds, culminating in a sprint beating Marianne Vos in to 2nd place and Judith Arndt in 3rd. She credited her team mates for their work, pulling back the 12-rider break with 1 lap to go, putting Cooke back in contention.
Cooke's book, Cycle for life was published in October 2008 by Kyle Cathie (ISBN 9781856267564). The book combines her passion and enthusiasm for cycling, together with her knowledge, proficiency and experience. It is aimed at cyclists at all levels, with expert advice on everything from getting started to turning competitive, covering commuting, racing and riding with friends.
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Famous quotes containing the words olympic, world and/or success:
“Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)
“In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap, our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.”
—Erica Jong (20th century)
“The white man regards the universe as a gigantic machine hurtling through time and space to its final destruction: individuals in it are but tiny organisms with private lives that lead to private deaths: personal power, success and fame are the absolute measures of values, the things to live for. This outlook on life divides the universe into a host of individual little entities which cannot help being in constant conflict thereby hastening the approach of the hour of their final destruction.”
—Policy statement, 1944, of the Youth League of the African National Congress. pt. 2, ch. 4, Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope (1988)