As one of the country’s most decorated athletes, Australia’s chef de mission knows the triumph and heartache of competing at this level better than most.
hen two-time Olympic gold medallist Anna Meares retired from professional cycling in 2016, her dad said he would teach her how to be normal.
With time, her second husband, Nick Flyger, encouraged her back into other interests such as art and pottery, and she fostered children and worked with charities. One day, he asked her what she would want to do if nobody knew her name.“I said chef de mission for Australia … because you get to lead the best team of the biggest athletes and the most motivated group of people you’ve ever come across,” she says. “He said: ‘OK, chase it.
Her official entrance into the world of competitive track cycling came at 11 years old when she and her sister, Kerrie, watched champion cyclist Kathy Watt compete at the 1994 Commonwealth Games. “We would spend our weekends trimming the gutters and pulling weeds from the sand,” she says. “On Fridays, we got a packet of chips, an orange juice, and a chocolate. When I still treat myself, I get a chocolate, a packet of chips, and a drink. Generally, I’ll go for Twisties.”When Meares first joined the Cycling Australia program at 19 years old, she juggled training with work as a bank teller and serving customers at the canteen of the local hockey and soccer stadium.
Meares told her coach she wanted to make the Olympics. He had suggested aiming lower – a World Cup as a first step. She proved she could do better, making the 2004 Athens Olympic team and winning her first gold medal at 20 years old. She also broke the world record for the 500-metre time trial. Meares was within millimetres of becoming a quadriplegic and yet by August, she was competing at the Beijing Olympic Games. Not going to the Olympics wasn’t a consideration. Immediately after her accident, Barras came up with a new plan to move her through the injury.
There are plenty of those on this year’s team, including swimmer Lani Pallister, the daughter of Janelle Elford and goddaughter of Dawn Fraser. In June, Pallister qualified for Paris after a three-year journey recovering from an eating disorder. On the Paralympic team there is Alexa Leary, who barely survived a serious cycling accident in 2021.Meares’ experience at four Olympic Games is already shaping how she approaches the role.
It hit its peak in the lead-up to the 2012 Games, when Meares’ team launched a three-year campaign known as “Project Know Thy Enemy”. It involved watching more than 300 hours of Pendleton’s performances and the recruitment of Australian male team member Alex Bird to impersonate Pendleton’s style in hundreds of simulated races.
In the months after Rio, Meares continued to be hit with hurdles. In 2017, two years after the end of her nine-year marriage to Mark Chadwick, her coach, Gary West, died. He had been diagnosed with motor neuron disease a year earlier.
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