End of an era: Carol Cooke looks back on legendary para-cycling career

“Everybody was ready for me to kick the bucket.”

2024 was meant to be Carol Cooke’s swan song. After more than 13 years at the top level of the sport, having won nine world titles and three Paralympic gold medals, Carol decided it would be her last year as an elite para-cyclist.    

Instead, it was possibly one of the most challenging years of her life.

“I got really sick this time last year with what they thought was pneumonia, but it was my own body creating inflammation in my lungs. I was in and out of hospital three times, and the third time was the worst because I got COVID on top of it,” recalled Carol, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998 at the age of 36.

“I just about didn’t make it. My sister flew down and everybody was ready for me to kick the bucket. I didn’t realise, and I was in ICU, and I’m like ‘I’ll be good, I’ll just get over this.’ My lung specialist said without my fitness I wouldn’t be here.”

Although she recovered, it became clear she wouldn’t be fit enough to fulfil one of her goals of competing at her fourth Paralympics, in Paris.

She had already achieved more than she’d ever imagined when she first started cycling. But she wanted to exit international competition on a high.

Carol on the start ramp at the 2023 Glasgow Cycling World Championships with one of her biggest challenges still to come.

 So, when there was a hint of a chance to race the UCI World Championships in Switzerland last year, Carol made sure she was there.

“I thought to myself, ’You’re not going to get the final year you wanted,’” Carol reflected. She recalls telling AusCycling’s Para-cycling Technical Director, Warren McDonald, about her ambitions.

“When I got out of ICU I sent Warren a message and said I want to go to Worlds in September. And everybody looked at me and said ‘Yeah, okay, good goal.’ They didn’t think I would make it,” Carol said.

“But I got there, and I did my last (international) race. I did better than I thought I would. It didn’t matter how fast I went, I got there and I went out on my own terms.”

Next week, some 14 years after making her debut at the Australian para-cycling national championships, Carol’s career will come full circle when she lines up in Perth for her final major race.

“I didn’t get to race at Nationals last year because of being sick. And then in 2023 I had a crash in the time trial and blew out my shoulder. I just wanted to finish off by finishing a Nationals, and now it’s in a different location that’s really cool. I just thought that would be a nice way to finish off,” Carol said.

Where it all began

Carol’s first-ever cycling race was the national championships in 2011 in Caloundra, near Brisbane, and it changed her life forever.

She went into that event with no expectations and not much of an idea what she was doing.

She had been training with the Australian para-rowing team, which just missed out on qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Paralympics by 0.8 seconds. One of her teammates had recently made the switch to para-cycling. She suggested that Carol do the same.

The Melburnian had to first work out how to transport her 22kg steel-frame tricycle to Queensland. 

The airlines were charging $800 to take it as checked baggage, so Carol asked a friend to transport it on the back of their truck for the four-day journey.

Even though she and her trike arrived in one piece, she realised there was more work to be done. Having only previously ridden the trike to and from rowing training, Carol wasn’t across the technical regulations for racing on it.

 “I didn’t know anything about the rules, so I didn’t have a safety bar on the back,” Carol said.

“So, I did the time trial and that was fine. But for the road race the rules are, you have to have a brake on each wheel. I only had a drum brake on the back and callipers on the front, so I didn’t have actual brakes on the wheels. 

“I looked up a welder in Caloundra, and he made a piece of metal that came off the back, and we got a mechanic to design calliper brakes across the tops. And then he designed a safety bar. He did it in a day and I was able to do the road race.”

When she did race, she shocked the competition. In the time trial, with the engine of a rower, she smashed the Australian national team’s qualification benchmark.

“I remember doing the time trial and I had no idea what to do, so I just rode as hard as I could. And when I finished, Peter Day, who was head of the para program, he came up to me and he said ‘Oh my god, where have you come from?’. And I said ‘Melbourne’,” Carol laughed.

“And that was the start, I made my first team from those Nationals.”

A champion in the making

Carol’s first World Cup came six weeks after the national championships and was just her third-ever race.

This time, she’d driven from Melbourne to Sydney to compete, but came down with shingles the day before her event.

Plenty of athletes would have stayed in bed under those conditions, but for Carol, that wasn’t an option.  

“I said ‘I didn’t drive 1,200km not to race’, so I did. After I won both races, I remember the next morning getting a cup of coffee at the hotel and Peter came up to me and said, ‘I’ve got one question for you: are you a rower, or are you a cyclist now?’

“I said, ‘Okay, I’m a cyclist.’”

Carol won nine world titles during her career, including in 2017 above.

While she continued to juggle rowing and cycling up to 2014, it was the latter sport that opened the door to realising a childhood dream. 

“In rowing, we just missed going to the Beijing Paralympics by 0.8 of a second. So, there was still that hunger of going to a Games. I’d dreamed of being an Olympian from the age of seven, and I was a swimmer, and I was hoping to go to the 1980 Moscow Games but that didn’t happen.”

Carol finally got her chance at the 2012 London Paralympics. It was truly a dream come true: she came away with a gold medal in the T2 time trial.

Carol at the London 2012 Paralympics.

It’s one of the highlights of her career, she says, and at 51 years old she thought she might not get another opportunity to represent Australia.

As it turned out, London was just the beginning. Carol would go on to compete at two more Games.

“I was still racing at Nationals, and I was good enough to get picked for national teams, and all of a sudden, it was 2016. This time I got picked and came away with two gold medals (in Rio),” Carol said.

Making it two from two gold medals in the time trial and road race in Rio.

“I thought, ‘That’s it. I’ll just ride. I’ll have fun.’ Then, all of a sudden, Tokyo is around.

“It was getting harder and harder, obviously, and I thought, ‘There’s no way at 59 I’m going to make the team.’ Then it got postponed and then I thought, ‘Oh my god, 60, there’s just no way at 60 I’m going to make the team’.

“And I did, and I got the silver at the time trial.

“I remember standing on the podium and looking at the German girl beside me, and I looked down at my medal, and I thought, ‘This is my gold-medal moment.’

“Because she was 31 and I was 60, and I thought, that’s okay – this is mine.”

A silver that felt like gold in Tokyo.

The great motivator

Despite all her successes on the road, cycling was always more than just about winning medals or racing at the Games.

“Cycling was keeping me walking. Exercise is keeping me out of the chair, it’s kept me healthy,” Carol said.

“The fitter I got, the less I spent in hospital. From 2008 to 2021 I didn’t spend time in hospital because of a relapse with MS. I really believe it wasn’t the motivation of getting to another Games. It was about staying fit and keeping myself going. 

“When I was diagnosed I was told not to exercise, that I would never be able to do this silly sport thing again. Now, they are telling people try to stay as fit as you can,” Carol said. 

Always having fun. Carol crossed the finish line at the 2017 Para-cycling World Championships.

After Road Nationals in Perth, Carol plans to continue to keep riding, whether that be laps around Albert Park or the Boulie in Melbourne with her St Kilda Cycling Club friends, or the state time trial series later in the year.  

Whatever the future may hold for Carol on and off the bike, at the core of everything she says she does it to have fun.

“That’s the one thing I’ve always preached to people, you’ve got to be having fun,” Carol said.

“Do it because you are enjoying the sport and so that it becomes a passion, and you never know where it can lead.”