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Armitstead and Cooke named in women’s Olympic road race team

Lizzie Armitstead insists her dispute with Nicole Cooke is water under the bridge after the pair were named in Great Britain’s four-strong team for the women’s London 2012 Olympic road race on Sunday July 29.

Lizzie Armistead is expected to lead the women's team

Former time trial world champion Emma Pooley also makes the squad, while world junior champion Lucy Martin has been handed a shock call-up, with Katie Colclough and Sharon Laws dropped from the initial shortlist announced last week.

Armitstead, team leader at last September’s World Championships, accused Cooke of riding “for herself” in Copenhagen after the pair were separated in the finale and Cooke went on to contest the sprint, finishing fourth.

Cooke is the defending Olympic champion but has struggled to recapture the form which saw her win Great Britains’s first gold medal of the Games in Beijing, with the Welshwoman also crowned world champion in the same year.

This summer’s women’s Olympic road race tackles just two laps of the Box Hill circuit, as opposed to nine in the men’s event, and is likely to end in a bunch sprint as a result, with Armitstead, the stronger sprinter of the two, expected to be team leader in London.

“Our problem was in Copenhagen, not about London. It’s behind us,” said Armitstead.

“It’s a totally different race and a totally different strategy that we’ll have. For me they’re separate things. I’m confident whoever’s selected, whatever team combination there is that we’ll work together.”

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