Meares praises cycling team-mate

Australian track cycling star Anna Meares wants more credit given to Kaarle McCulloch, her formidable team sprint partner.

Since Meares and McCulloch swapped positions at a World Cup round in 2009, with Meares taking the lead-off role, they have become nearly unbeatable.

They have won the past three world titles and loom as Australia’s best chance of a cycling gold medal at the London Olympics.

But to some extent, McCulloch still rides under the radar, which is not surprising given Meares’ lofty profile.

Meares is also the world sprint and keirin champion.

She commands massive respect particularly in the wake of her legendary performance at the Beijing Olympics, where she won silver in the sprint despite a near-fatal neck fracture at the start of the year.

While Meares, for now, has overtaken British star Victoria Pendleton as the top women’s sprinter, the Australian No.1 says McCulloch should never be underestimated.

“Kaarle has the speed, power and acceleration to get onto my wheel, but she also has that really good top-end speed of that second lap,” Meares said.

“Not a lot of people give her the credit for how hard it is to get on an 18.6 standing lap and then hold her own for the second lap.

“She’s a really impressive rider and people really need to give her the utmost respect for what she does in that position.”

Since switching roles, Meares and McCulloch have only failed to ride the fastest time in competition once.

That was at the Manchester World Cup round, where China qualified fastest ahead of them.

Meares and McCulloch promptly beat them in the final.

The decision to switch the team sprint order came during an overseas World Cup in 2009.

“We’d convinced Gary Sutton, who was the coach on that trip … to have a chat to (national track coach) Gary West back home and convince him it was a good idea to give us a crack at an opposite position,” Meares said.

“I went just a little bit quicker than Kaarle in the standing lap and we won that World Cup.

“We started to do some analysis – it ended up being quite a good idea to actually swap us.”

Meares is ignoring their undoubted status as the duo to beat this year in the women’s team sprint.

“It’s not about this whole ‘red-hot favourite, world champion No.1 team’,” she said.

“It’s about how can we work together to be better than our best.

“In the team sprint, no other team has an influence on our performance.

“It’s only me, it’s only Kaarle and it’s only our coach Gary.”

Meares and McCulloch raced against each other in the team sprint on Thursday at day one of the national titles.

Racing for SA, Meares and Rikki Belder beat the NSW combination of McCulloch and Cassandra Kell.

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