Cooke, the 2003 and 2006 World Cup Series Champion, went into today's final stage, five laps of a 15km road circuit at Barwon Heads on Victoria's Surf Coast, with only a slender seven second overall lead and with twenty riders within a minute of her but she responded to every attack to finish with the front group and cement her victory.

The key assault came, as expected, from the T-Mobile team which had three riders, Judith Arndt at 17sec, Ina-Yoko Teutenberg at 20sec and Oenone Wood at 22sec, poised to wrench the leader's purple jersey from the Raleigh Lifeforce rider. On the third lap all six T-Mobile members went to the front and applied the pressure but Cooke responded to foil their plan.

"Today the T-Mobile team threw down the gauntlet and opened up the racing but with my team-mates we were able to ride within our capabilities and to seal off the overall win," said Cooke. "We’re absolutely delighted."

Wood launched a solo attack in the final lap and was joined by New Zealand's Michelle Hyland soon after. The pair managed to gain an advantage but Cooke's team mates rallied to defend her jersey catching the escapees two kilometres from the finish. With Cooke's Tour victory secure the jostling then began for stage honours.

American Tina Pic (Colavita/Sutter Home) won that battle to claim the Barwon Heads win for the third straight year pipping Sydney's Rochelle Gilmore (Menikini Gysko) and Melbourne's Jenny MacPherson (Australian National Team).

T-Mobile weren't the only threat for Cooke in today's stage which offered bonus seconds in the four intermediate sprints and at the finish.

"There was a lot to keep track of and I don’t know how we did it I’m really struggling to remember the race," explained Cooke. "Everything happened, between sprints, lead-outs, crashes, windy echelons, chasing, closing gaps, attacks, counters, the finish somewhere in there, I don’t know it was a very busy day.

"This is awesome we’ve started the season, our first UCI race and we’ve won it," said Cooke whose brother lives in Australia and who has spent the last eight weeks in Melbourne preparing for the season. "I have got some things which make it very nice to be here, it’s not really like being away from home and it's great for training."

Cooke not only protected her lead but she extended it picking up bonus seconds by winning the fourth intermediate sprint and claiming places in the sprints two and three. She finished the 228km three day event with total time of 6hr15min46sec, ten seconds clear of second placed overall Germany's Larissa Kleinmann. T-Mobile claimed the next three places through Arndt at 23sec, Teutenberg at 26sec and Wood at 28sec. T-Mobile gained some consolation with a jersey victory for South Australian Alexis Rhodes who won the Best Young Rider classification.

"Today we were trying to go for the overall and we got on the front and did a bit of a teams time trial and managed to shell most of the bunch," said Rhodes. "The girls were awesome but we couldn’t shake Nicole, she’s a class rider."

Meantime stage one winner Dotsie Bausch (USA - Colavita/Sutter Home) who began the day in third overall, eight seconds off the lead, was the biggest loser of the day. She opted to target the sprint bonuses in an effort to overtake Cooke and began well with second place in the first sprint and victory in the second to move to within four seconds of the lead. But the Kentucky born rider was caught behind a crash during the third lap and her challenge ended.

"We were going for time bonuses for the purple (leader's jersey) and there was just a big, bad crash," said Bausch who won the Tour's opening time trial stage on Tuesday. "I almost caught back on and in 100 metres there was another huge crash."

But Bausch's team mate Pic rode away with the lead group and sprinted home first to give Colavita/Sutter Home a second stage win.

"I felt bummed, I was so bummed," said Pic of the misfortune of Bausch. "But the cool thing is I have this pink bike this year and for every win we’re donating US$1000 to breast cancer research."

Tomorrow the riders will enjoy a day's rest to prepare for Saturday's opening round of the UCI World Cup Series. The 115km (8 laps of 15km course) Geelong World Cup will kick off at 10.30am from Waterfront Geelong with more than 100 riders from 17 nations vying for victory.