NATIONAL coach Julian Winn (pictured) has defended his decision not to enter a Welsh team in this month's prestigious Women's World Cup cycle race in Newport.

Star Nicole Cooke dropped a bombshell a week ago by pulling out of the event, which is attracting the best riders on the planet, with a knee problem.

Now Wales will have no representatives in the first major global race for years because a team from the Principality isn't, in the coach's view, strong enough.

Former national road race champion Winn, from Abergavenny, said: "I've decided not to put a Welsh team into the Women's World Cup event because we just haven't got the women to do it at that level.

"It is not a good shop window to have the Welsh team going out the back of the race and I'm afraid, whether people like it or not, that is the realism of it and if people want to argue with me about it, they know where I am.

"It is not right. I can tell you what is going to happen and you can't even put a team in for experience because you don't get experience, you just get a kicking. That's not a good experience to have on your front door."

But Winn, who took the Welsh cycling hotseat only last month, said having no Welsh riders in the big showpiece event based at the Celtic Manor Resort did not mean he would rule out sending a female side to next March's Commonwealth Games.

Winn added: "There are some women who seem to have the right mentality - and I've got my eye on them - and we need to select a team in mid-October. So, if they make the grade, that's fine, but if we have to have a reduced team at the Commonwealth Games, then so be it."

The coach, from first hand, having ridden the National Championships for two years around East Gwent, knows how gruelling the course is.

He said: "Three times up Wentwood Hill in a women's world class field, there is only one rider in Wales that can compete (Cooke) and she's not riding - and that is it. Simple.

"There are four or five women who are riding well at a decent standard. With no disrespect to them a couple of them have been in the British series and showing the right attitude but is that good enough is what you have to ask.

"The void that Nicole creates because of her superiority means they struggle to put a GB team around her, which is my answer to anyone who asks."

British interest in the August 20 race will centre around Manchester's ex-national champion Rachel Heal, runner-up to Cooke in the last three years of the domestic event.

Other riders taking part include last year's Athens Olympic road race champion Sara Carrigan, world champion Judith Amdt and reigning World Cup champion and current series leader Oenone Wood.