Vos Pips Cooke to World Title

Nicole Cooke yesterday saw a record-breaking third overall win in the women's World Cup slip from her grasp in the final race of the series, the Rund um die Nurnburger Altstadt, won by the world champion Marianne Vos of Holland. Her win took her past the Welsh woman to take overall victory by 70 points.

Vos sealed her win in the bunch sprint which traditionally decides this 72-mile event around the streets of Nuremberg, Cooke needed to finish fourth to maintain her overall lead but was in fact 34th in the lead group of 44 that fought out the finish. With double points on offer for the final event, that was enough for Vos to clinch the title.

A World Cup winner in 2003 and 2006, Cooke had won the opening two rounds of the series, the Gee long World Cup and the Tour of Flanders at the start of the season, and two weeks ago she had stretched her lead over Vos in the penultimate round, the Grand Prix de Plouay in Brittany.

Cooke led her Raleigh-Life force squad to the overall team title, but that will be small compensation. She will now look to salvage something from her end of season in the world road race championship in Stuttgart on September 29.

On Saturday the Tour of Britain closed in Glasgow with stage victory for the team pursuit world champion Paul Manning and its tightest ever finish overall, less than a second separating winner Romain Feillu of France from the rider who started the day in the yellow jersey, the Spaniard Adrian Palomares.

Feillu was officially level on time with Palomares, after which the judges had to look back at the result of the opening time trial seven days earlier in Crystal Palace Park, London, with the French sprinter declared the winner by 0.49sec.