Nicole Cooke video interview part II: “Women’s cycling was at its height in the 1990s”

You can watch part I of Dave Everett’s interview with Nicole Cooke here.

As a former world and Olympic champion, double World Cup winner and victor in races such as the Giro d’Italia Femminile, La Flèche Wallonne, the women’s Tour of Flanders and the Amstel Gold Race, Nicole Cooke is one of the best female riders of all time.

She walked away from the sport in early 2013 and since then has had minimal involvement, bar some intelligent interviews which expressed her views on anti-doping, women’s cycling and minimum pay. She also released an fine autobiography this year, entitled “The Breakaway”.

This month Cooke travelled to the Taiwan KOM Challenge and while her competitive days are behind her, she was one of the standouts at the event. As might be expected from her palmares and reputation, she earned plenty of attention during her time there, but also impressed with her humility and openness.

CyclingTips Dave Everett sat down with her for an interesting video interview, part II of which can be seen above. In this interview Cooke gives her perspective on the current state of women’s cycling, saying that while the sport is certainly on the incline, much of the recent growth is simply making up for lost ground.

“Women’s cycling was probably at its height in the 1990s with the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, the Hewlett Packard race in America — they were all two weeks long — the World Cup…” Cooke told CyclingTips. “We’ve actually seen a bit of a decline — we’re now starting to ramp up again.”

We hope you enjoy the second part of this interview.