Which GB woman will be favourite to lead the team?

Lizzie has the form so far and is apparently the better sprinter.
I worry about Cooke though.

On current form it has to be Armitstead, but I'd never write off Cooke.

I think Cooke will ride for herself regardless of who is Team leader tbh...

The Mad Rapper wrote:

Choppered wrote:

ddraver wrote:

I think Cooke will ride for herself regardless of who is Team leader tbh...

This, unfortunately.

Which means they should think about leaving out cooke if thin lizzie is leader. But then, cooke is defending champion...

I think that's crazy. The defending Champion should never be left out.

Surely you should go for the best chance of a medal, it's 4 years since Cooke won in Beijing and since then, she hasn't been anywhere like as dominant.

Could have been taken out of context.

Or it could have been a smart journalist putting 2 and 2 together.

I think Armistead should be the leader but I'm not that fond of either of their personalities. I don't think Armsitead's Twitter feed is helping her with her public image much.

The Mad Rapper wrote:

I think Armistead is a mouthy little cow TBH. I've read interviews where she's come across as a complete prima donna. She has shown Cooke no respect for her achievements.

The spot should go to who can win.

Seems a common theme with the GB women when they have some success (with the exception of Pooley). VP comes across like that to me. Unfortunately Nicole comes from a time where you had to make your own way and has never been a team player. However, I wouldn't leave her out as we have seen in the World's before now that she comes good in big races even when she has had no form. Have the remainder of the team ride for Lizzie and let Cooke do her own thing, no-one is likely to let Cooke off the leash so it could work in Lizzie's favour in any case.

I watch and read many of these threads with great interest and have done so for several years. I don't comment but this story has me irritated. Drugs busts - Armstrong, Contador – who next? One comes in the door as the last one exited. This one is crazy because so many seemed to have jumped onto the bandwagon. I just have no idea what the factual basis was for dreaming that Miss Armitstead was going to win in Copenhagen. I kept quiet, thinking perhaps I had missed something last year, like a series of 10 wins over the best of the rest of the World. But now events seem to be shaping up like last year. So here goes for a first post.

The story that sparked this thread was

London 2012: Lizzie Armitstead targets Tour of Flanders win
Lizzie Armitstead believes victory at this weekend's Tour of Flanders could help her make sure of a place in the British Olympic road cycling team.
Armitstead, 23, faces Nicole Cooke - her GB team-mate but fierce rival for lead rider in the squad - as they ride for separate teams in Sunday's race.
"I'm hoping to peak this weekend. The Tour of Flanders is the main goal of the spring," Armitstead told the BBC.

I am not too sure, that 34th in Flanders was quite the success it was meant to be. Nobody appears to have thought to refer back to this rather inconvenient fact.

If Flanders was too hilly, or too bumpy or too Belgian or whatever the fault with it, that it so obviously shouldn't have had, even without Vos riding, then the Energiewacht Tour could not have found a flatter site anywhere on the planet. So with Tuetenberg back from the states and Vos back, our would be Cav mk 2 had the all field in place to show everyone that her claim that she could have used, nearly as flat, Copenhagen, to inflict her first ever sprint win over Vos (and a lot of others), in a serious race, was realistic, (if it hadn't been for the evil Miss Cooke wrecking her chances by staying at the pointy end with Vos, Tuetenberg and Bronzini rather than coming back to 38th wheel and picking up our heroine - whilst Pooley et al watched on, apparently turned to stone and incapable of any action, as this terrible disaster unfolded in front of them). (You couldn't make it up. Do the journalists who peddle this pap think we are all cretins ? Pass the wooden spoon to that gentleman over there - the one with the dodgy pen and inky notepad and dribbling nose!)

Sadly it does not appear to have happened. During the 5 stages of this sprinters’ tour, the high water mark seems to have been a 5th place on one stage & 47th on another, with a 68th & a DNF rounding out the set. First, pesky AA team-mate Wild wins a sprint finish with no AA team-mates present in the break, to be able to claim a share of the spoils (just how unthoughtful is that ?) Now Cooke, taking a moment to put down her broomstick, has gone and spoilt it all by getting a stage win, in somewhat dramatic fashion. Our Lizzie did not make it look any better for herself by climbing off the bike on that stage.

The "Lizzie win" in the Gent Wvelegem was somewhat overstated. It was an unranked race taking place on the same day that a Women's World Cup event took place in Italy. All the big hitters were at that.

Then, correct me if I am wrong, but I am not too sure all this was a "cat fight". I think the whingeing, that is the basis for the story all came from one direction, somewhat aided by a coach who has a track record of not actually pushing the boat out to support Cooke and who obviously has little idea of the etiquette related to his professional employment. I cannot seem to remember Miss Cooke bitching in 2003-2007 - "where is the rest of the GB team - are they changing their library books?" as she fashioned a series of road medals and near misses, with just fresh air for support ? I particularly remember her coming within a whisker of gold in 2005 when up against teams Germany, Australia, and Lithuania, with nobody around her. The only quotes I have seen from Cooke relating to London are - "I will work for whoever the team leader is." Not sure we can make her walk the plank for that type of subversion. Don't we have some video of her with a Kalashnikov in hand, or mistreating kittens or something ? No my vote goes to the GB rider who has done more at the Road Worlds than any other Brit.

That poll above is why I write.

Against Lizzies track record, Cooke's 4th place in Copenhagen, looks a step beyond anything that she could fashion even with full support. And that was achieved by Cooke with nobody giving her a hand, whilst the 3 ahead of her all had team-mates around helping, rather than hanging back and sharpening their knives for later.

Cooke doesn't deserve any place in London based on sympathy or history, she needs to show form, which she appears to be doing. However, as was so well written above, when it gets real tough, even when she has shown only rubbish form before the race, she has a very persistent habit of delivering the goods, in a way that no other GB rider has ever done before. Even in this more barren spell it has been from the Olympics 1st, 2008 1st , 2009 DNF, 2010 4th, 2011 4th. If Cav wins in London to match Cooke's achievement of both holding World and Olympic road titles at the same time, he still will have quite some road medals to go to catch up Miss Cooke. And she has done it on the pan flat and the tough courses, something Cav will never do.

If this is an unpopular view, and the poll above would indicate that convincingly, then so be it.

Now where did I put my picture of Anna Kournikova ? Grand Slams - who's interested in those nasty things? (phew that took a long time – don’t expect another post soon !)

Surely BC have 'the numbers' for current form and past form and can decide who is where they need to be and where they are compared to the past?

I'd back Cooke (Huge Caveat: unless they know something I don't, which as I'm posting on an internet forum and have no knowledge of the riders is entirely possible).