Cycling: Cooke climbs to top

Nicole Cooke's reputation as the rising star of women's cycling has once more been confirmed with her second World Cup win in four days, a victory which has catapulted her into the overall lead.

The 20-year-old Welshwoman, who already has four World Championship titles and a Commonwealth Games gold medal, blazed away from the field with a kilometre to go in the Flêche Wallone event here yesterday.

But her task was far from over. Cooke suffered badly on the last few metres of the Mur de Huy – a climb with 19 per cent gradients – which rounded off the race, but managed to accelerate away from her closest pursuer, the Canadian Susan Palmer-Kolmer.

"My legs felt like they had exploded with 200 metres to go. It was touch and go," said Cooke, who now has an advantage of 17 points at the top of the World Cup classification.

The Spaniard Igor Astarloa won the men's race in the Flêche-Wallone. Aitor Osa, also of Spain, finished second, with Alexandre Shefer, of Kazakhstan, finishing third, to give Saeco two out of the three podium places.