Britain’s 2008 Olympic road race champion Nicole Cooke retired from cycling yesterday with a parting shot at the drugs cheats who she said had “robbed” her.

“I do despair that the sport will ever clean itself up when rewards of stealing are greater than riding clean. If that remains the case, the temptation for those with no morals will always be too great,” Cooke (29) told the BBC.

“I have ridden through some of the darkest days of the sport in terms of corruption by the cheats and liars.

Cooke, who won gold in Beijing and took the world title in the same year, said she had been offered drugs during her career in cycling.

“I have been robbed by drugs cheats but am fortunate, I am here with more in my basket than the 12-year-old dreamed of,” she said.