If you’re depressed at the soap opera surrounding multi-millionaire cyclists taking 13 years to own up to their persistent cheating, you’ll enjoy this article about Nicole Cooke’s retirement. – ‘I had to say exactly how it is’
On her first Tour de France, she shared a house with other cyclists. When she opened the fridge she discovered it was full of medicines, which she promptly chucked out. Were the other women annoyed with her? She laughs, and says no they just pretended to be appalled and said they knew nothing about them. “A couple of weeks later, my team stopped paying the wages for me and my team mate, who had also said no. We were the only two riders who didn’t get our wages for the rest of the year.”
Post-retirement, she may not have a million pound nest egg or a stream of invites to American chat shows, but, it must be a really great feeling to be able to have an Olympic road race jersey, untainted and won through hard work alone.
One thing is for certain – if she writes a book I would buy it!
A book would have a good angle as it would add balance to the stories of cheaters to show how others were affected – doping needs to show the stories from the victims side and to name and shame the teams that doped would be an excellent read.
i agree. her statement was worth televising. bitter some say – jesus, i would be if i had gone through what she had and come out of it with olympic and worlds jerseys. it was utterly excellent and uncomfortable reading – i hope she now makes some good money from ‘being clean’ when everyone else wasnt.