The Edinburgh woman, who represented Scotland in pole vault and long jump at two Commonwealth Games, is already back in training, having returned to athletics. She believes her best performances are still be to come.
Cooke won Scottish senior titles in long jump, pole vault, triple jump (setting records in each) and sprints, plus Scottish district titles in gymnastics and fencing as a youngster. Yet all that went by the board after she answered a Facebook advert. Five months after her debut on ice, she and another convert from athletics (Nicola Minichiello) were Britain’s first world bob champions in 44 years.
Winter Olympic aspirations in 2010 perished when the pair crashed on their final run in Vancouver, on the track where Georgian slider Nodar Kumaritashvili died. Cooke spent almost 18 months fearing she might never walk properly, and describes going up and down stairs “sideways, like a crab”. Though she made in back to the GB No.1 brake-woman berth, she missed Sochi Olympic selection in February. Undaunted, she returned to athletics and achieved the Commonwealth Games long jump qualifying standard. “But I needed to do the performance twice, and fell short of the second by three centimetres,” she said yesterday while confirming her winter sport career is over. more
