‘Winning is addictive, and I hated losing’: How Anna Meares won 11 world championships 

Anna Meares won a record 11 world championship titles during her illustrious track cycling career spanning 15 years. But, she says, there were also the attempts at being world champ that she lost – 29 in fact.

Each loss stoking the fire for her to want to win even more.

“Winning is addictive, and I hated losing,” Meares says.

From Olympic gold, world records and Commonwealth Games glory, Australia’s queen of the track ticked off many great achievements during her track career.

But perhaps one of her greatest achievements came in 2015, more than a decade after her first world championship win, when she claimed her 11th world title to become the most decorated female track cyclist in history.

To the outsider, Meares made winning look easy with her sheer brute power on the track.

But as she puts it, age catches up with you over the years and winning becomes harder.

“You go from being the hunter to the hunted,” she says.

And not only was her 11th title the hardest to win, but also one that was her proudest achievement on the track.

Read on to find out how Meares won her 11 titles, and watch the interview below.

YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST

“I was mid-field. It was May in Melbourne, a home World Championships. I knew I was capable, but there was no expectation at all for a result, let alone a win,” Meares recalls of the 2004 event.

With no pressure on her shoulders, Meares was just 20 years old when she smashed a personal best time in her pet event the 500-metre time trial, with a time of 34.34 seconds.

Starting in the middle of the field, she had set the fastest time and had the gruelling wait in the hot seat while 20 other world-class riders, which included Olympians and former world champs lined up to try and knock Meares off the perch to claim the title. But as hard as they tried, none of them could.

“I remember the last rider off was Natallia Tsylinskaya from Belarus. And I was fairly convinced that she was going to beat me because she was just one of the biggest powerhouses of the era. I was just so happy that I'd won, at worst, a world silver medal,” Meares says.

“And by the time she crossed, I was borderline tears. I was barely able to breathe. I had two hands on my head going, 'What the hell was happening?'

“And she didn't beat the time. And I won my first world title. My sister Kerrie, who wasn't competing at the time because she was injured, was in the SBS commentary box, and she was one of the first people that greeted me. The elation of that win was just something else.

“I remember getting my first rainbow jersey to wear in training, and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I didn't want to wear it, I didn't want to get dirty.”

For Meares racing in front of a home-crowd was an incredible experience but came with its challenges. The key was channelling the nervous energy, the anxiety, the adrenalin, and the excitement into a world-class winning race.

“It didn't help me narrow in focus, it absolutely made that the most difficult experience to date at that time, to be able to remain calm, to breathe, to find that focus, to put that into the warm-up,” she says.

“There was noise everywhere and that noise followed me. And it's a very powerful form of energy. And I always found the ability to lift when I had that crowd in my favour. I always lifted the competition but put me in front of the home crowd with that green and gold jersey on, and I was like, I felt six-foot tall when I was really only five-foot four.”

FROM DOING THE HUNTING TO BEING THE HUNTED

Eleven years, and nine additional titles later, with Olympic gold, silver and bronze to her name, world records and Commonwealth Games glory, Meares says she was a completely different person and athlete at the 2015 World Championships in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France.

“I went from loving trying to win, to in some ways being fearful of what happened when I didn't. I carried a huge amount of expectation in the latter part of my career that success was easy, but it actually was harder the older that you got working with a body that was ageing and becoming injured. And a lot of people didn't know that at that time my marriage was breaking down, so I was personally in a really bad place and those world titles weren't great world titles for me.”

It was a tough campaign for Meares. She had won silver in the 500 metre Time Trial and then when it came to the sprint event, it all fell apart for Meares, crumbling under the pressure of being the Olympic champion.

“I didn't even make the quarter finals and that was the first time since I could remember in my career that I hadn't made the quarter finals, and it broke me,” Meares recalls.

After that, she wasn’t even sure how she was going to start the keirin.

“Basically, my manager said, ‘look, just go out, relax, check out, go shopping, have an ice cream, have a coffee, whatever it is you want to do, eat a pizza, I don't care, just go and get your head out of the competition space and out of the cycling space’.

“So, I did. I had the biggest shopping spree in Paris that you had ever come across. I still have some beautiful items that I purchased that day that I wear currently, but it just got me out of the funk that I was in.”

The retail therapy had been a success and she would go on to race the keirin but on the condition that she could just go out and have fun.

“I said, ‘I just want to have fun. I don't want to have pressure, I don't want to talk tactics. Just let me go out, ride my bike and have fun.’ I don't remember what I did, but he [Gary West, Meares’ coach] told me I rode three perfect races, qualifying semis and finals.

“I just remember crossing the finish line thinking to myself, 'what the hell just happened?' I've seen it back, I've got no memory of it.

“I know I went to the front really early. I know I backed into the bunch and just controlled it really well. And I rode the black line like there was no tomorrow and it just achieved the dream that I'd been chasing for so long.”

The title win made her the most decorated female track sprint in history. No one else had won more than Meares at that time.

“There are so many things around that 11th world title. But I'm just really proud because it's hard to be consistently successful over a long period of time. It's hard to win once, it's hard to get to the top once, it's hard to repeat it, it's hard to do it four times, eight times, 10 times. And to do it 11 times, more than anyone else is, you know, probably one of the biggest achievements that I'm most proud of in my career.”

2011: THE TRIFECTA

For Meares, the 2011 World Championships in Apeldoorn, Netherlands was up there with the best.

She won the triple world championship crown – the sprint, the keirin and the team sprint with Kaarle McCulloch.

“That was a phenomenal experience. I was the first Australian woman to win a sprint world championship. In that event, I was the second in the world to do a triple world championship crown win behind Victoria Pendleton. I was a part of an era of remarkable women that continued to smash the glass ceilings of women that preceded us."

TO TRACK STAND, OR NOT TO TRACK STAND

The 2012 World Championships saw Meares once again facing off against one of her biggest rivals, Briton Victoria Pendleton, in a dramatic semi-final sprint showdown.

Pendleton had come crashing down in the first of three races, and was relegated for crossing her line. The second race saw Meares penalised for the same offence.

“So, it was on,” Meares said.

“Then Gary [Meares’ coach] came to me and the whole plan for the London Olympics [a few months later] was working around the track stand in particular for Victoria Pendleton. And he came to me and he knew that it was important, he knew it was a world title and he knew it was at home.

“And he said, ‘Do you want to use the track stand?’ And I said, ‘no’. I said, ‘we need that for London’”’.

It didn't cost me, but I didn't give myself every tool possible to win that world title and I didn't win it, and to her absolute credit, Victoria Pendleton did after hitting the deck bloody hard. I was able to turn it around to win the Keirin within a day.”

A few months later the gamble had paid off for Meares who had kept the trump card up her sleeve and would go on to beat Pendleton at the Olympics in the sprint.

“The funny part about that, we went on to London and I would win the sprint, which Victoria was world champion for, and she would win the keirin, which I was world champion.”

“I think what it came down to was we were we were two remarkable athletes that sometimes the smallest of things tipped it one way or the other. And sometimes those moments were just unpredictable and you just had to deal with them as best you possibly could at the time.”

“NOTHING IS GUARANTEED”

So how did an elite athlete like Meares who won and achieved so much stay motivated?

“Winning is addictive and I hated losing, so that was a really good combination for me personally,” Meares says.

“But also, I love the ability to check a box myself with improving. I love being able to have rivals come and go to have the ability to assess the strength and weigh up their strengths and weaknesses, to then work out how I needed to improve, to continue to be competitive over a long period of time.

“I did the same thing over and over year in, year out but the little elements that constantly changed kept me intrigued and I was one of those rare people that just fell in love with something early. And I knew that I loved it and it just meant so much to me that I was prepared to go through those lows in order to potentially have the highs.

“I loved working with my team, I loved working with my coaches, my sports scientist, my nutritionist, my strength and conditioning coaches. I was very aware that there was a lot of people a part of my success.”

And it was a piece of advice she got from her coach Gary West that resonates with her still to this day.

“Gary West said to me that it couldn't guarantee the outcome, couldn't guarantee that I would win gold medals, couldn't guarantee I'd be world champion or Olympic champion, but he could guarantee the process and application to give me the best chance to make it happen. And if I bought into that and worked with him and his team to create the strategies required, then we would have the best chance of being successful at the end of the day,” Meares says.