Cycle star Meares braces for more pressure

After winning three more national titles, cycling superstar Anna Meares says she has plans in place to deal with growing expectation in an Olympic year.

Anna Meares.

Anna Meares says competition for the women's sprint event is as fierce as ever. (AAP)

Cycling icon Anna Meares knows her triple title treat is just the start of it.

Meares did what Meares does at the Australian track championships that ended Saturday night in Adelaide: win everything.

The megastar won all three of her events - the keirin, sprint and team sprint with Stephanie Morton.

She now has an astonishing 36 national titles overall.

But with the world championships in London next month, and the Rio Olympic Games in August, Meares knows this is only the beginning of the pressure.

"Pressure will constantly build," Meares said.

"The interest and the timeframe towards the world champs and the Olympic Games gets shorter and shorter, and I have got a number of different strategies in place, which are all psychological strategies."

Such as?

"I can't share all the strategies, then it kind of helps everyone else - I'm out to help myself," Meares said.

But trying to control her perfectionist nature is among them.

"I have to not be as much of a perfectionist as I want to be because that is the one side of me that judges the harshest," she said.

Meares said her plans to cope with the expectation of more world championship and Olympic glory were plotted with her personal psychologist and Cycling Australia's psychologist.

"They are working in conjunction with my coach and my manager, who are really important aspects to me functioning as an individual athlete," she said.

"If they're not all on the same page then it doesn't communicate and come together for me as the athlete at the end of the day.

"So I'm picking up and I'm learning.

"This is my 22nd year in this sport and I'm still learning and that is what, I guess, has kept me in the sport as long as I have been."


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Source: AAP



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