NICOLE Cooke launched Great Britain's gold medal assault on the Beijing Olympics.

The Swansea-born cyclist went into the women's road race as one of the favourites.

It was do or die for Cooke, who had been so disappointed with her fifth place finish in Athens four years earlier she could hardly speak.

As she crossed the finish line under rain which had fallen all day on China's Great Wall, a sharp roar was the first noise to pass from her lips.

Cooke won the first of her seven national titles at a precocious 16 and Commonwealth gold at 19, so this success felt overdue and failure might have left her with just one more chance at Olympic level.

"It was just joy," she said after her victory.

"There was just so much emotion coming out that I wasn't composed enough to give a proper salute but I guess that's just the person I am."

Cooke's moment of Olympic glory came after she joined a five-rider break in the final stages of the race.

There was one last cautious gesture as she went slow and wide at the hairpin bend before the short climb to the finish, conscious that in the wet conditions she would have fallen had she gone too hard.

That allowed the other four to edge away from her but it was then that she gave full vent to her passion as she powered past them to the line.

Cooke's medal was the first ever win on the road by a British Olympian, the first cycling gold won by a British woman and she became the first Welsh Olympic champion since Richard Meade's 1972 equestrian success.

Cooke attended Brynteg Comprehensive School in Bridgend, the year below Wales rugby star Gavin Henson.

She began cycling at the age of 11 and won her first senior title just five years later when she won the women's title at the British National Road Race Championships.

She also won four junior world titles.

In 2002 she won the women's road race at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester and was the 2003 UCI Women's Road World Cup champion.

Success has consistently followed Nicole Cooke, but 2008 was her year. If the Olympic title wasn't enough, a few weeks later she became the Women's Road Race World Champion, making her the first woman or man to win the Olympic Gold and World Championships in the same year.