It has not been a happy year for Nicole Cooke. The country’s leading road cyclist had expected to use the post-Olympic year to put something back into her sport by establishing her own team, Vision 1.

Cooke has overcome many obstacles in her years on the road, but now, for the first time, there was a barrier she could not overcome — securing commercial backing to keep her all-female team going. Being an Olympic, world and national champion, it seems, was just not enough.

Speaking about Vision 1 for the first time since abandoning the project, Cooke told The Times: “Vision 1 is what I felt would really be something to work for. I was able to get things going, but the world economic crisis hit at exactly that moment.”

Cooke has spent many years as the only British rider in the European peloton and felt that the United Kingdom cycling establishment had nothing in place to help women riders to break into international road racing. “I know how hard it can be to break into international cycling from Britain, which doesn’t have the history or things in place to help the girls to develop and to get to that international level,” she said.

The team overcame the start-up problems and appeared to be working well, but by mid-season it became apparent to Cooke that she did not have the support she needed and she was worn out by the responsibility of running the team. The Welshwoman knew that she would have to pull the plug.

“In reality there were a lot of people who liked the idea of being associated with Vision 1 and with myself, but when it came to doing the hard work [they] weren’t so excited to do that part of the bargain,” she said.

She was obviously disappointed by the lack of support, but tries to take something positive out of the experience. “I think I’d always been a person who edges on the side of optimism,” she said. “This showed me the importance of a secure, well-founded business plan. Thinking you had a great concept wasn’t enough. In our first year, telling people about it was very difficult, because they wanted to see it in action and you can’t show it in action until you’ve got some backing.”

Apart from the emotional and financial cost, the project took a toll on Cooke’s most crucial asset: her performance on the bike. She defended her British title in June but by September, after suffering a virus, she lost the rainbow jersey at the World Championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland.

For Cooke, pursuing her vision had been a calculated risk. “There was a calculation that if there was a year to try Vision 1, it was this year, because of the Olympic cycle running in four years,” she said. “Things were going well through to the middle of the year, when I won the British Championships, but gradually my performance just started going down and I wasn’t at what should have been my normal level come the World Championships, so it was a big disappointment. But I have learnt from that.”

Cooke believes that a man who had her list of achievements might have had little problem in attracting eager sponsors, but she shows no hurt or anger, rather a certain stoicism. “Maybe I learnt right from day one that there was always a prejudice,” she said. “There was no championship for girls in the under-16 category and in the junior category. Maybe growing up with that, I didn’t expect any more, unfortunately. It is unjust and things would have gone differently if I had been a male, and that’s it. But I can’t change that.”

Cooke came from outside the cycling establishment and seems to have remained there. In 1999, when the bulk of her training was riding to school, she won her first national title aged 16, with her father on the side of the road, handing her energy bars and water bottles. Cooke beat all the riders from the British Cycling world-class performance plan, but the establishment regarded her victory as a fluke.

In May 2000, she repeated the feat in a round of the British series, then headed for the national championships.

“Come the nationals, we had the women’s road world-class performance plan, the mountain bike performance plan, any track riders they could bring in — basically I had three teams riding as one against me — and, that was it,” she said. “In a fair race I can compete, but not against 12 people. That really would have been the ride of my life. My family spoke about it afterwards and we all just said that, in a way, it was the biggest compliment they could have given.”

So instead of being welcomed by the cycling establishment and integrated into the senior team, Cooke was left on the outside and had to find her own way to the highest level.

“I think they [British Cycling] had invested so much in their women’s team and really built it up to take on the world,” she said. “They set themselves up for that. They were trying to break into international racing and from my point of view, if they’d been able to use those years to learn and to set up a nice path that, when I was 18 I could step into, that would have been fantastic, but it didn’t happen.”

Cooke is reluctant to dwell on the past and would rather talk about the future. She has just signed with Nürnberger, the German team, for 2010 — the team will be renamed Skyter Shipping after switching sponsors — and she will ride alongside Amber Neber, a former time-trial world champion from the United States.

She aims to re-establish herself in the one-day races, which is what she regards as her strength. She will also compete in some UCI World Cup races, then take a break to prepare for the World Championships, in Geelong in the Australian state of Victoria, in late September, followed a week later by the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

At the age of 26, 14 years after taking up competitive cycling and seven years as an elite cyclist, Cooke’s hunger has not faded. “I feel like I’ve done everything I set out to do, so I’m extremely proud of that,” she said. “The challenge is to try to repeat it.”

The 2012 Olympics in London is the next big target, then Cooke will decide whether to hang up her wheels.

“In terms of the age, there is no reason why I couldn’t go on, provided I was still enjoying it,” she said. “I can’t say — but certainly three more years.

“In terms of ambitions after cycling, I haven’t really thought about that — there is nothing driving me that I know exactly what I want to do after cycling, but I’m happy to leave it like that. In three or seven years, I might be really interested in something I’m not interested in now and I feel that I’m quite free to do that. I’m just very happy seeing what catches my fancy in terms of life after cycling. I feel very fortunate about it.”

When Nicole Cooke began cycling, there were no British teams racing internationally so she had to go to Europe and join international professional teams, finding her own way and learning everything by herself on the way to the top of women’s road racing. The philosophy behind Vision 1 was to choose talented young riders and give them the opportunity to develop alongside professionals who had experience riding in the European peloton. Vision 1 aimed at investing in the next generation of riders and spreading the cycling message into sports, businesses, schools and youth organisations.

Vision 1: the line-up

Vicki Whitelaw (Australia, 32)
Christel Ferrier Bruneau (France, 30)
Debby van den Berg (Netherlands, 29)
Katie Curtis (Britain, 21)
Jackie Garner (Britain, 20)
Dani King (Britain, 18)
Nicole Cooke (Britain, 26)
Cooke’s elite wins 2008: Olympic Games road race, UCI Road World Championships road race 2007: Grande Boucle 2007: Ronde van Vlaanderen 2006: La Flèche Wallonne 2006: Grande Boucle 2006: World Cup series 2005: La Flèche Wallonne 2004: Giro d'Italia Feminine 2003: La Flèche Wallonne 2003: World Cup series 2002: Commonwealth Games road race