Pure gold: disbelief as Anna Meares does it again

Julian Drape
Feb 23, 2015, updated Feb 23, 2015

Anna Meares claimed a record-breaking 11th title by winning the keirin and Annette Edmondson won her second gold of the week in the omnium as Australia finished the tracking cycling world championships in Paris on a golden high.

Australia won 11 medals overall – four more than any other county – with four gold, four silver and three bronze.

Only host nation France won more gold with five.

Meares’s win in the keirin, her last of four events in Paris, means she now has more rainbow jerseys than any other female track cyclist in history.

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Until Sunday (Monday morning AEDT) she’d shared the record with France’s Felicia Ballanger who won the sprint and 500m time trial at five consecutive world championships from 1995.

Meares cried on the podium as the national anthem was played and later told AAP they were tears of “almost disbelief”.

“I had a dream before the Paris worlds were announced that the world titles were in France, that I won my 11th world title, and that I got to meet Felicia Ballanger,” the reigning Olympic sprint champion said.

All three came true with the Australian subsequently meeting, and hugging, her French hero in the centre of the velodrome.

Coach Gary West said Meares deserved praise for breaking the record but was quick to suggest “we can’t get too carried away” ahead of the champion’s title defence at the Rio Olympics.

“There’s plenty more work to do particularly in the sprint,” West said after Meares failed to make it through to the quarter-finals of that event on Friday.

“Anna will be the first one to remind me of that.”

Fellow Aussie sprinter Stephanie Morton should have been in the final with Meares but got a puncture on the first lap and the rules precluded her from participating in the restart.

“Today is only going to make me hungrier and stronger for a win next time,” she said.

“This is one little bump in a long road.”

Edmondson won gold in the omnium with 192 points, beating Great Britain’s reigning Olympic champion Laura Trott (176 points) and Dutch rider Kirsten Wild (175).

The 22-year-old’s first individual world title came three days after she won gold in the women’s team pursuit with Ashlee Ankudinoff, Amy Cure and Melissa Hoskins when Australia obliterated the world record.

Edmondson said the omnium win was “pretty special” given she’d targeted it for so long and had previously come second (2012) and third (2013 and 2014).

“But nothing compares to winning it (the team pursuit) with my teammates,” the South Australian told AAP.

“I played that over in my head even warming up for this omnium.”

Matthew Glaetzer finished fifth in the men’s sprint to continue a run of lean years for Australia’s male sprinters.

Glaetzer qualified fifth fastest and beat German powerhouse Robert Forstemann en route to the final eight but was outclassed on Sunday by Dutch rider Jeffrey Hoogland.

West later said a heavy crash at the national championships three weeks ago might have taken the edge of Glaetzer who, before falling, posted the fastest-ever flying 200m on Australian soil.

“We want him bigger and more powerful and stronger (and) that will come in time,” the coach said.

“Fifth is a good result based on the events of the last three weeks.”

In the final event of the five-day championships Jack Bobridge and Glenn O’Shea teamed up to finish 10th in the 50km madison.

Both riders could have been suffering from a heavy workload with Bobridge earlier winning bronze and silver in the team and individual pursuits, respectively, and O’Shea claiming silver in the two-day six-discipline omnium.