Bobsleigh: Cooke the golden girl

Published on Monday 23 February 2009 08:49

WHEN Edinburgh long jumper Gillian Cooke was forced to curtail her athletic ambitions because of a foot injury, little did she know it would lead her to World Championship gold in under a year.

But, after answering an SOS from the British bobsleigh team posted on the internet networking site Facebook, that's exactly where the former George Watson's pupil finds herself after becoming a world champion in her adopted sport just four months on.

Cooke provided the push-off and operated the brakes for Sheffield's Nicola Minichiello as the pair became the first Britons to win a bobsleigh gold since Anthony Nash and Robin Dixon at St Moritz in 1965, thanks to four silky-smooth runs at Lake Placid's 1455m Olympic track in New York state.

They set the fastest times in both the third and fourth heats to post an overall winning time of three minutes 48.22 seconds, beating the United States' Shauna Rohbock and Elana Meyers by 0.38 seconds.

Minichiello won silver in the 2005 World Championships at Calgary in Canada and teamed up with Cooke, who has won medals and broken Scottish records in the long jump and pole vault, in October.

Cooke said: "It's absolutely fantastic. The whole team is absolutely buzzing. When I came on board back in October, I was hoping we could do well. But I never imagined we'd be standing on top of that podium. It's a bit unreal."

The pair now have their sights firmly trained on winning Olympic gold next year in Vancouver, and Cooke added: "There's a long way to go until Vancouver but hopefully we can be even stronger then.

"I need to get some conditioning in for next winter, because I was looking to peak for the summer athletics season rather than this, so there'll be a change to the way I train.

"Rather than competing all year round, I might stop athletics earlier because my focus is now on this."