Newsgroup: it.sport.ciclismo
Titolo: Cooke is riding high in a world apart

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2006/09/03/sohart03.xml
So how does it feel to be below David Walliams in the betting for the 
BBC Sports Personality of the Year award?
Nicole Cooke, Britain's world-conquering cyclist, has been away from 
home for so long that she requires an explanation about the Little 
Britain star's cross-Channel swim. She takes a sip of water as she 
ponders the prospect of being deemed less worthy than a comedian 
smothered in goose grease.
"To be honest, I don't worry about recognition," she replies. "First of 
all I do cycling for my own satisfaction, because I enjoy it and want to 
be successful. I know that in my local area in Wales there is a lot of 
interest in me but, in terms of the rest of the nation, if there isn't 
the recognition then you have to accept that."
The exploits of Andrew Murray, Monty Panesar and Zara Phillips mean 
Walliams, once the bookies' favourite for the BBC award, has now slipped 
in the betting, though Cooke's price of 25-1 screams injustice.
This, after all, is a young woman who recently became the first British 
road-racing cyclist, male or female, to be ranked No 1 in the world and 
who today has the chance to clinch the second World Cup title of her 
career - just days after a crash split her helmet and left her with a 
gashed arm. What more does a girl have to do?
Cooke shrugs. After five years on the women's professional circuit she 
has given up fretting about her sport's low profile compared with men's 
cycling - or indeed other better marketed women's sports.
A couple of years ago she came over all militant, joining a newly formed 
women's commission set up by cycling's governing body and spending every 
spare minute of the day firing off e-mails about ways of boosting 
sponsorship and media coverage along the lines of women's tennis. She 
even suggested a petition to protest at the inequality of 11 Olympic 
gold medals being on offer to men compared with the seven available to 
women.
Her dynamism was met by infuriating inertia. "I couldn't believe it," 
she says. "I put a lot of effort into things I thought were just causes 
but I was just left thinking, 'Why bother?' I started asking myself what 
these people on the women's commission were actually doing. They would 
come to meetings but no action was ever taken. In the end it wore me 
out. To be honest, I've had enough and I'm now just concentrating on my 
cycling."
What is even more galling for Cooke is that the recent drug scandals in 
men's cycling, in particular the positive dope test for Tour de France 
winner Floyd Landis, have further undermined the women's side. Cooke, 
herself, is outspoken on the subject of drugs, having taken a public 
stand against all kinds of non-therapeutic injections, even of legal 
pick-me-ups such as amino-acids or sugars.
"If you speak to my team manager, he'd quite like to kill Floyd Landis 
with his bare hands," she says.
"Women's cycling isn't able to reap the rewards that men's cycling 
enjoys but when it comes to the scandal on the men's side, we then 
suffer perhaps even worse than the men because we don't have the same 
level of sponsorship.
"A lot of companies who my team manager was talking to a couple of 
months ago are now saying, 'Cycling? We don't want to go anywhere near 
that. You're all drug-takers'. You try to tell them that women's cycling 
is not actually like that but how can you tell someone who's already 
made up their mind?"
Having given up the committee room, Cooke may well discover that 
concentrating on cycling will prove a more effective way of promoting 
her sport. Her achievements in the saddle this season are becoming hard 
to ignore.
In June she won the women's Tour de France and she goes into the 
penultimate event of the 12-race World Cup series in Rotterdam today 
with a commanding 153-point lead. If she avoids being beaten by her 
nearest rival, Germany's Judith Arndt, the title is hers.
In three weeks' time she has the chance to underline her dominance when 
she attempts the road race and time-trial double at the World 
Championships in Salzburg.
A medal in both, even a golden one, is not inconceivable. A brilliant 
racer since her teens, when she won four junior world titles, the 
23-year-old has also developed into a superb competitor against the 
clock, winning nearly all of her time trials this year, including a 
victory over Karin Thurig, her Univega-Raleigh team-mate and the 
defending world time-trial champion.
Cooke will have the advantage in today's race of being fresher than her 
rivals after being forced to take an unscheduled rest from last week's 
Holland Ladies Tour following her crash on a rain-soaked second stage on 
Tuesday. "It was a wet downhill corner and a Dutch girl next to me just 
wiped out and, as she came down, she hit my front wheel and I went 
straight down too," she says.
"She took me out and there was just nothing I could do. But although it 
hurt and it broke my helmet, there were some other girls who went 
spinning over who were worse off than me. I had a lot of pain in my arm 
and across my leg. My helmet was broken and my head was really sore."
The following day she had a large swelling on her thigh that felt "like 
a big water bomb sloshing around" but by Thursday she was back on a bike 
for a training ride.
A victory today may not be enough to upstage the blue-blooded star of 
equestrianism when it comes to the BBC vote, but Cooke is prepared to 
shed the red stuff for the cause.
-- 
http://modesta.biciticino.ch
Il sito dedicato alla giovane ciclista lituana Modesta Vzesniauskaite

 with his bare hands," she says.
And that's just plain idiotic to speak like that. The problem is much more
complex then Floyd.

 > with his bare hands," she says.
"People see doping as black or white," Jacobs says. "But there are a lot of
gray areas in anti-doping supplement contamination cases...
Jacobs is turning into drug testing's version of Johnnie Cochran, an
attorney who becomes high profile because high-profile clients turn to him
during a crisis. While exonerations are rare under a system that assumes a
charged athlete is guilty, Jacobs has gotten clients reduced sentences and
earned another a half-million dollar settlement from a supplement
manufacturer.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2006-09-19-jacobs-doping_x.htm
B-