When 80-year-old Geoff Cooke left hospital late last summer, the doctors told him he’d need to do a bit of exercise to bounce back from his treatment. “It was quite funny really,” he begins to chuckle. “I think they were talking about walking. I said, ‘Listen, you can’t imagine what I actually do. I do 200 miles a week on the bike. I’m an Olympian. I’m a Commonwealth Games gold medallist. I’ve been doing it for years. I was national coach for 10 years. Cycling’s been my life’,” he pauses. “I don’t think they quite believed me.”
Every word Cooke spoke was, of course, true. A track sprinter for Great Britain at the 1972 Munich Olympics, he had been admitted to hospital for a gallbladder procedure, having been struck down by a gallstone that was causing him enormous pain. The timing couldn’t have been worse. In six weeks, he was down to compete at the UCI Masters Track World Championships, the most important date in his calendar. He had only missed one edition since the competition was first held in 1995. All of a sudden, his 80-year-old body threatened to end his near 30-year streak.
