NIKKI Harris was back in Great Britain colours last week to put up an excellent show in one of the world's biggest women's stage races, the Tour de L'Aude, in France.

Belgium-based Harris, from Draycott, received a surprise call-up to supplement the young Olympic Academy team Britain sent to the race.

And she found herself holding her own in the tough nine-stage event with some of the most experienced female road racers in the world, including Britain's Olympic road champion, Nicole Cooke, who was riding for her professional outfit, Vision 1 Racing.

In fact, 22-year-old Harris matched Cooke's time on the opening 3.9km prologue of the event, the pair being 17 seconds down on first stage leader Linda Vilmussen.

When it came down to the business on the first tough long stage, of 116.5km, Harris did her allotted job in helping team-mate Lucy Martin finish 11th in the sprint, before finishing the pack herself.

After a team trial for the second stage, Harris landed 15th, the highest British finisher on the 116km third stage.

Cooke came to the fore with second place on stage four, with Harris in a solid 17th, again the best finisher of the GB squad.

After a monster climb on stage five, Harris impressed the team bosses with a lightning descent to make up time and come 26th.

By now, the younger GB squad members were racing for survival but Harris moved up a few places in the general category with 40th on stage six, followed by 48th on stage seven and 46th on stage eight.

There was to be no let up, with five solid climbs in the ninth and final stage but Harris was to the fore at the end, involved in a sprint for seventh place, although finishing 15th.

The race was won overall by Claudia Hausler of Germany, with Cooke fifth, seven minutes and 58 seconds adrift.

Harris's 35th overall was a commendable effort for a rider with, still, relatively little road racing experience after a junior career mostly in cyclo-cross and on the track.

Back in her Belgian base, tired but happy, she said: "I just couldn't turn down the call-up – I have always wanted to do this race and I knew if I could get through it would give me a great base towards the cyclo-cross season and also some good form for the road.

"The tour was hard but very enjoyable.

"I learned a lot about how far I could push myself and how much my body could cope with.

"It's just what I needed and it has given me some confidence.

"I felt very strong in a lot of the stages and was surprised that I was able to get up there on some of the days.

"The worst I felt was day seven, where we were right in the mountains.

"Every day was flat out from the start but this day was especially hard, with a 14km climb 4km into the race.

"It was split to pieces and I had to really dig in to get into a good bunch in front of me."