Kelly Cycle Coaching has a Paralympic  gold medallist! Overnight, Carol Cooke competed in the time trial at the London Paralympics and claimed gold, winning her 8km TT in a factored time of 13mins50sec, 21 seconds clear of the silver medallist.

Extract of an article by Australian Paralympic Media, Gennie Sheer:

Australia’s second gold medal came in the final event of the day when Victorian Carol Cooke realised her dream of gold.

“It feels unreal, unreal,” said the 51 year old who was an undercover police officer in her birth country of Canada for 14 years. “Being here was unreal. It’s taken so long and I probably won’t realise until I stand up there (on the dais).

“My mantra is If you believe in your dream it may come true but if you believe in yourself it will and I just kept saying that all the way through and thought I can do this,” Cooke explained as tears welled in her eyes.

“My coach gave me something to put on my wall and she said I had to read it every day. It said ‘take pride in how far you’ve come and have faith in how far you can go’ and every morning I’ve woken up and looked at the wall and read that and I just proved it today.”

Thirty-five years ago Cooke was training as an able bodied swimmer hoping to make the Canadian 1980 Olympic team but before selection was finalised a boycott of the Moscow Games was announced.

“I thought that dream had died,” she said. “People say unfortunately I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998, but I would never change that diagnosis because it’s given me so many opportunities.

Cooke was identified for the Paralympic rowing program and made the team for 2008 but they missed qualifying for Beijing by o.8 of a second.

“I thought again the dream is gone.”

But cycling team mate Alex Green, also a former rower, convinced Cooke to start cycling and she has quickly developed into one of the best in the world.

“After the World Cup and World Championships where I’d come second in both the road race and time trial I was given the opportunity by (coach) Peter Day and Cycling Australia and he said if you get fitter and stronger we’ll build you a trike.

She did both and today raced on a sleek 14 kilogram carbon fibre tricycle that replaced her previous steel framed 22 kilogram machine.

Cooke says a lot of the credit for her win today is down to the way she prepared which included hours riding a simulation of the course and three weeks in France putting the finishing touches on the training.

“We videotaped the course in June and we put the gradient to it so I’ve ridden on a stationary bike looking at my butt, chasing my butt around the course and never catching it but it’s just been so invaluable to do that,” she explained laughing. “When we were in France we had a computer trainer that we had the course on again. It was actually much harder on the computer trainer than it was on the course.

“Monday when I rode I thought ‘Wow! this is really easy compared to June when I rode it so today, yeah it hurt, but that’s because you go out there and give 110 percent,” she said. “It was a great race.”

Cooke’s factored time of 13:50.54 was 21 seconds ahead of Germany’s Hans-Peter Durst (14:11.95) with past world champion, David Stone of Great Britain third (14:25.66).

Nigel Barley was stunned by his silver medal result in the 16km H3 classification hand cycle contest. He clocked 26:18.34 to be 54 seconds behind the winner, Poland’s Rafal Wilk, (25:24.17) but Barley was more than 40 seconds quicker than bronze medal rider Bernd Jeffre of Germany (27:00.90).

“I’m pretty blown away by it really,” he said. “Everyone came here on fire and in the best shape of their life and we just rode and (I placed second) so I’m a bit speechless really.”

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