Anna Meares

Anna Maree Devenish Meares (born 21 September 1983) is an Australian retired track cyclist.

She currently resides in Adelaide in South Australia where the Australian Institute of Sport's Track Cycling program has its headquarters at the Adelaide Super-Drome.

She has been the 500 metre track time trial world champion on four occasions, and a gold medallist at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games.

Anna Meares started competitive cycling at the age of 11 in 1994, following her older sister Kerrie Meares into the sport.

The family were inspired to take up competitive cycling by Kathy Watt winning a cycling gold medal at the 1994 Commonwealth Games.

With the family living in the small Queensland coal-mining town of Middlemount, it was more than two hours drive to the nearest cycling track at Mackay for the girls to train.

Over the course of her career, Meares has talked about how gradually she became aware of her position as a role model, portraying "a different stereotypical image of what it is to be a strong woman. It's not always about being skinny. It's about your presentation and your confidence and everyone is unique."

In 2002 Meares narrowly missed a bronze medal in the inaugural inclusion of the 500-metre time trial at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, while her older sister, Kerrie Meares won the gold medal in the event.

She won a bronze medal in the sprint.

During the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, she won a gold medal, and set a new world record in the Women's 500-metre time trial of 33.952 seconds.

Meares had to beat a new Olympic record set just minutes previously by the reigning World Record holder, Yonghua Jiang of China.

(See Cycling at the 2004 Summer Olympics).

In May 2004 at the Time Trial World Titles in Melbourne Meares claimed the title of Women's World time trial champion, and won a silver for the sprint event.

Also claimed first in the 2004 World Cup Time Trial in Sydney.

In 2005, Meares enrolled in a Bachelor of Learning Design course at Central Queensland University, but deferred her studies to concentrate on sport.

The event was abolished from the Olympic program so Meares could not defend her title in 2008.

Meares also won a bronze medal in the Women's 200m Sprint event in Athens.

Meares made an astonishing come back from a very bad cycling accident at the World Cup in January 2008 when she broke her neck.

Meares crashed in the third round of the World Cup circuit in Los Angeles in January 2008, seven months out from the Olympics.

Meares fractured her C2 vertebra, dislocated her right shoulder, suffered torn ligaments and tendons, a heavily bruised right hip and skin abrasions as a result of skin sliding on wood when she crashed at 65 km/h.

Astonishingly she was back on the bike just 10 days after the fall and went through intensive rehabilitation.

With the points Meares had secured prior to the crash, she was able to fight her way back and qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Meares had an eventful semi-final in the sprint at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Having lost the first heat to her opponent Guo Shuang, she won the second heat.

The third heat saw Guo come down the banking too steeply and her front wheel slipped from beneath her.

The heat was re-run and although Guo won by a few millimetres, she was relegated for coming down the track and pushing Meares onto the côte d'azure on the final lap.

This put Meares through to the final ride-off for gold against Victoria Pendleton, where she was beaten and received the silver medal.

At the 2012 World Championships which took place in Meares' home country of Australia in Melbourne, Meares was favourite for three gold medals.

In the team sprint Meares won silver as Germany set two world records in the event.

In qualification for the individual sprint Meares broke the world record for the flying start 200 metres.

Meares completed her four laps in just 10.782 seconds shaving 11 thousands of a second off Simona Krupeckaitė's mark.

In the semi-final Meares faced her old rival Pendleton.

Pendleton clashed with the Australian in their first heat and ended up on the floor before Meares was relegated from the second for going outside of her lane.

In the decider Pendleton won in a photo finish, with Meares settling for bronze after defeating Lyubov Shulika.

In the keirin, Meares won both her qualifying races before reaching the final, where she held off Russian Ekaterina Gnidenko and German Kristina Vogel to win the first of two world championships in Melbourne.

At the 2015 UCI Track Cycling World Championships Meares took the gold in the keirin—her 11th world title in total, which made her the most decorated female track cyclist of all time.

She was the flag-bearer and captain for the Australian team at the 2016 Summer Olympics, where she won a bronze medal in keirin.

This made her the first Australian to win individual medals in four consecutive Olympics.

On 16 October 2016 Meares announced her official retirement from her current competitive cycling career.

In February 2020 she gave birth to a daughter, Evelyn, with her partner Nick Flygger.