Abstract: A controlled cooling apparatus for a wire rod coiled into loops immediately after hot rolling. The coiled wire rod is transported with the loops laid substantially flat with a space of a given pitch from one another on a cooling bed. Nozzles are provided to project a cooling fluid such as forced air from below the cooling bed at an angle of from 40.degree. to 140.degree. with respect to the plane of the cooling bed to cool the coiled wire during its transportation. The nozzles are open in a transverse direction of the cooling bed with a nozzle opening area ratio of from 0.8 to 1.2, to provide uniform distribution of the cooling fluid in the transverse direction, whereby uniform cooling can be accomplished to minimize the variation in the cooling rates at densely overlapped loop portions and at sparsely overlapped loop portions.