Champion Cooke opens with Cup win

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GEELONG, Australia -- World number one and defending World Cup series champion Nicole Cooke from Wales won the opening round of the 2007 World Cup road series in Geelong on Saturday.

Her performance came two days after she was the first non-Australian to win the lead-up three-day Geelong Tour.

She outsprinted Oenone Wood and fellow Australian Nikki Egyed to win Saturday's 120-kilometre race.

Cooke and her Raleigh team have been training in Australia for a month, giving her plenty of time to prepare for the first round race.

"The way it all panned out, holding off the bunch, beating such a fantastic sprinter like Oenone Wood, who's a past winner here, it was one of the most fantastic wins of my career," Cooke said

It was Cooke's second trip to Australia for racing after producing one of the performances of last year's Melbourne Commonwealth Games to finish third in the road race.

Almost 100 riders from 17 countries began Saturday's race and almost immediately had to contend with a fierce thunderstorm, but the skies cleared by the time they headed into the second of eight laps of the 15-kilometre circuit.

The second round of the World Cup Series will be raced in Belgium next month.

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Cooke and her Raleigh team had trained in Australia for a month in preparation.

Champion Cooke opens with Cup win

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