The first time Nicole Cooke glimpsed the summit of Mont Ventoux, a legendary moonscape shimmering with menace 7,000ft above the plains of the Lubéron, she was more than two minutes ahead of the field and trying hard to keep her rhythm after an hour of climbing in 40 degrees of heat.
"I went around a corner and saw five or six hundred metres of scree and three or four hairpins going at crazy angles," she said this week, looking back to the June afternoon when she consolidated the lead that eventually gave her victory in the Grande Boucle Féminine, as the women's version of the Tour de France is now known. "I'd never been up there before, even in a car. I'd studied the route, but just to see how barren it was . . ." Her eyes widen at the memory of one of cycling's great challenges.
This was the first time the mountain had been included in the women's Tour. But not even the Giant of Provence, whose place in the history of British cycling was assured when Tom Simpson died on its slopes in the 1967 men's Tour, could intimidate Cooke. "As soon as we saw the race profile," she said, "there was a sense of excitement about being given the opportunity to race there. We knew it would be a day to remember."
In fact it turned out to be a day of days in what has been the year of years for a rider who this week became the first British cyclist of either sex to be named No1 in the world rankings issued by the UCI, the international cycling union. Mont Ventoux provided a highlight of a year nearing its climax as Cooke goes into the final three races of the season-long World Cup with a 74-point lead that will be hard for her rivals to overcome, followed by the world championships in Salzburg in the last week of September.
Victory in the women's Tour was a significant addition to Cooke's list of honours, which already includes wins in 2003 in the World Cup and the women's Giro d'Italia and a gold medal at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The scale of her success against riders from nations with a far greater depth of resources and support ought to have put her among the favourites for the BBC's sports personality of the year award.
After the lung-searing climb up Ventoux it was the descent the other side that gave Cooke particular pleasure. Hurtling through the turns with the screeching tyres of her support vehicle in her ears, she took a further two minutes out of the field by the time they reached the finish line. "It was what makes days like this worthwhile," she said.
The "day like this" was a cold, dark and rainswept one this week in Switzerland's Engadine mountains, where an eight-hour training run involving 180km of climbing and descending, including the famous Stelvio pass just over the Italian border, had left her so drained that she slumped to the floor outside the door of her hotel room in St Moritz with barely enough energy to pull off her cycling shoes. "I couldn't imagine how I was going to summon up the strength to open the door," she said over dinner a few hours later, once the colour had returned to her cheeks.
Equally it was the sort of a day with which she has become increasingly familiar since she started racing at the age of 11 in the Vale of Glamorgan, encouraged by her father, a physics teacher who had competed in his own youth. "My dad had a lot of experience from when he raced," she said. "He knew what mistakes he'd made and he didn't want me to make the same ones. He was never a good sprinter, for instance. He said, 'I lost so many races because of that and you're not going to make the same mistake.'
"He was also very good at thinking about more than just the here-and-now. In Wales at the time there were hardly any riders in the under-15 age group. So when I was 12 I went to Holland and did a stage race with 50 or 60 other Dutch, Belgian and German kids of my age. It was perfect. We were being treated as proper racing cyclists. There were jerseys, flowers and commentators and they really made it a very good atmosphere. I came home and said, 'OK, this is what I think I really want to do.'"
Very soon her schooling was being rearranged to take account of her training schedule. "I did some O levels and A levels a year early and that gave me extra time to train. The junior world championships coincided with my last year of A levels but because I'd spaced out my education that wasn't going to suffer. I was able to get everything I wanted out of my studies and that worked really well." She passed maths, physics and biology with A grades.
The next stage, aged 18, was a three-week trial with a professional team in Italy. And it was there that she encountered the kind of behaviour which has put men's cycling under such a cloud this summer. "I went out training with the girl I was staying with," she said, "and the team manager came along to get an idea of how we were going. We met up again later that afternoon and he came around with a white jar with some liquid in it. I said, 'What the hell is that?' He said, 'Don't worry, they're not for you. They're for the other girl. She's not very strong and she needs some amino-acids to build her up.' The girl was quite happy to inject them into herself.
"I just could not believe it. The whole mentality was something I hated. A body isn't made for having big infusions of acids or sugars or anti-oxidants. If you eat healthily and you take vitamins and minerals, if you're taking care of yourself, why should you ever get to the stage where you have to give yourself a massive boost? I made it very clear that I thought what she was doing was totally flawed. That's always been my stance on those performance-enhancing methods - even though they're not drugs. And when it comes to drugs, I want to win races and know I've won them because I was the strongest and because of my hard work. If I was faced with a serious question about whether to take drugs, I would leave the sport. I can enjoy cycling and going for rides without a number on my back. I don't have to be in a race to enjoy that."
had she ever been beaten in a big race by a woman she suspected of doping? "I know there are a few riders with question marks over them," she replied, and spoke of losing a World Cup race in Montreal to a Canadian rider who was subsequently accused of taking EPO. "But women's cycling doesn't have the same history as men's cycling. We didn't have riders taking drugs to ride the Tour de France in the 1920s or six-day riders using amphetamines just to stay awake in the 1960s. There really was no women's racing scene until it picked up in the 1990s. And we don't have that merry-go-round of yesterday's riders being today's team directors."
Nevertheless her successful multinational Univega-Raleigh women's team is feeling the effect of the bad publicity drawn by Operacion Puerto and the disgrace of Floyd Landis. "We're trying to sort out sponsorship for the next two years with people who are doubting whether it's even worth putting money into cycling. So my team manager is having to fight quite hard and say that women's cycling isn't in the same state as men's cycling, it's actually very clean and a good platform."
She has been tested "about 15 times" this season, in and out of competition, and believes that a positive test should lead to a life ban from major competitions. "When a person makes a decision about taking drugs, the downside has to be so bad that she can't even think it's worth it. But if the consequence is a six-month ban and then a return to racing, what's that to be scared about?"
Thanks to the contract with her team and a handful of endorsements for equipment and energy products, Cooke makes the sort of money that a domestique in a men's ProTour team might expect. The difference in the prize money, however, is risible. The winner of a World Cup one-day race or the Grande Boucle makes €1,000 (£673). The winner's cheque for the men's Tour, by contrast, is upwards of half a million.
"The difference is the press and TV coverage," Cooke said on the day before the announcement of her historic No1 ranking rated no more than a mention on page 14 of Cycling News. "I've had so many conversations with editors. It's crazy because women are half of the population and women's racing is fun and exciting to watch and there are characters and rivalries just like in the men's events.
"The UCI should be doing a lot more to promote it. Two years ago they formed a women's commission, and about eight of us put our names forward to be involved. I spent a lot of time suggesting things but nothing's happened. So I thought, well, why bother? I'll just concentrate on myself."
At Plouay in France next weekend she resumes her quest for a second World Cup title, to be followed by an attempt to capture the world champion's rainbow jersey for the first time. In any year it would a crime that the towering achievements of this talented, intelligent and tenacious woman should be obscured by the refusal to take a cyclist as seriously as a tennis player or a track athlete. And given the current gloom surrounding British sport, it seems simply perverse not to recognise that, by any measure, Nicole Cooke is the best we have.
A winning habit Cooke's rise to the top
1994
Wins her first race, the Welsh cyclo-cross championships, the winter version of mountain biking
1999
At 16 becomes the youngest British senior champion by winning the Elite Road Race Championship
2002
Wins the women's road race at August's Commonwealth Games
2003
Becomes youngest ever, and first British, UCI World Cup winner. Wins La Flèche Wallonne races in Belgium
2005
Wins La Flèche and is second in the World Championship in September
2006
Wins La Flèche again and women's Tour de France. Named world No1