Olympics: Cooke Champions Women's Rights As Team Gb Take to Road

It took until 1984 for women cyclists to be invited to the Olympics, 26 years after the first women's world championships in the sport. Even today the men are far more generously catered for, a point Nicole Cooke was quick to reiterate after winning a gold medal in the road race yesterday.

Asked if she felt that there should be bigger teams in the women's road race Cooke said: "I think the biggest thing to address is the inequality of cycling medals between the sexes." Identical comments have been made in the past by Victoria Pendleton, the sprinter who is a multi-world champion on the track but who will have only one opportunity in Beijing to take a gold medal.

Although the men and women road riders enjoy two events each - road race and time-trial - the disparity comes at the velodrome, where there are only three women's events - individual pursuit, sprint and points race - to seven for the men. The reason for this is "historical", according to the International Cycling Union: in other words, no one has thought to do anything about it.

Cooke's Olympic gold medal was the first won for Britain's lottery-funded women cyclists and it should not be the last here. Pendleton will start favorite in her event, so too will Rebecca Romero in the pursuit and Shanaze Reade in the BMX. Wendy Houvenaghel is another medal chance in the pursuit, while the restrictions on team numbers meant she had to turn down a second slot in the sprint alongside Pendleton.

Cooke's victory yesterday will increase what is already a healthy influx of young British women into cycle racing for which she can claim credit. While Pendleton, Romero and Reade have emerged as role models in the last few years Cooke has been the example to follow since 2001, when she took a clean sweep of junior world championship medals in road, time-trial and mountain bike.

When the women's team pursuit world championship was inaugurated this year there was no difficulty finding a third woman to join Romero and Houvenaghel; Jo Rowsell stepped up from the women's endurance academy. Lizzie Armitstead is another promising road talent, while on the track Anna Blyth and Jess Varnish are improving young sprinters.

Cooke's gold also marked a milestone for the lottery-funded cycling program: the first senior gold medal in road racing. From the day in 1997 when Peter Keen began work as the first performance director the program has been guided towards the track where racing was more quantifiable and where there was a greater number of medals on offer.

Historically road racing is not the priority for the team, but that has changed with the foundation of the men's endurance academy in Tuscany, where road racing is used to harden young riders for the track, and with the inception this year of the Halfords-Bikehut pro-national squad, used as a vehicle to enable Cooke to prepare away from the pressures of a trade team.

In the longer term yesterday's success will strengthen Britain's current performance director Dave Brailsford's campaign to get a men's team competing in the Tour de France. Brailsford's argument has been that he can apply the same principles to road racing as he and Keen have to the track, where meticulous preparation combine with individual talent to produce medals. Brailsford hinted as much yesterday when asked to react to the first road gold medal of his tenure: "This win shows that if you prepare properly for a one-day race, not racing every weekend but doing something specific, it can work."