Australia's cyclists have capped off a phenomenal week of success with two more gold medals on the final day of racing in the 2011 UCI Track World Championships in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn.

The Cyclones stormed to a record result of eight gold, two silver and one bronze medal with sprint sensation Anna Meares claiming victory in the keirin to secure a golden hat trick, while defending champions Cameron Meyer and Leigh Howard overcame their 'marked men' status to take their second straight Madison crown.

The Cyclones won eight of the 19 gold medals on offer including six of the ten Olympic events contested at the championships.

In two other events, the women's teams pursuit and the men's team sprint, the Australians were just outside the medals in fourth place.

France was the next best performed nation with two gold (both in Olympic events) one silver and two bronze while Belarus claimed gold in two non Olympic events to sit third on the medal table.

Great Britain scored the second highest number of medals with nine made up of gold in an Olympic event, three silver and five bronze medals.

"It is a boost, for sure morale wise," said Meares of the team's performance.

"Morale carries confidence and self-esteem and happiness and all those kind of things snowball into the team around us as well."

Surprisingly Meare's keirin win was the first that did not produce tears and she admits that's probably because she had been so intensely focussed on winning her first sprint gold medal.

"It still has not sunk in yet," she said of the keirin win. "I just rocked up here in the morning and my coach Gary West said 'have some fun today I really don't care, just go and have some fun'.

"I was relaxed and I had no pressure on me and I really did go out and have fun."

But the final wasn't all plain sailing as Cuban Lisandra Guerra Rodriguez crashed out with two laps to go bringing back bad memories for Meares, who broke her neck in the keirin at the 2008 Los Angeles World Cup.

Her fight back to firstly qualify and then claim the silver medal in the sprint was one of the most inspirational of the Beijing Olympic Games.

"Initially I was not sure which way she (Rodriguez) was going to go, whether she was going to slide up the track or down the track," said Meares who hesitated momentarily halting her charge.

"I just needed to take a deep breath and when I saw Clara (Sanchez from France) was winding up again I just went to the front and kept going.

"I'm a great time trialler, so (I told myself) why not go to the front and see if they can get round me?" explained Meares who led over the remaining 400 metres to the finish line.

Meares says she can now tick off one of her life goals.

"The success level is far beyond anything I've ever achieved. My career goal, since I was 16 years of age in the QAS (Queensland Academy of Sport) was to win a world title in every discipline (sprint events)," she added.

"I've done that. I've finished that dream today and I'm so excited about what the prospects can be in the next year or two."

It was a case of Australia against a combined rest of the world when Meyer and Howard lined up to defend their 2010 Madison crown. The pair went in as unbackable favourites and they had to work on every one of the 160 laps of the 40km event.

They tried several times to breakaway only to be reeled in as their rivals joined forces to stymie their attacks. In the meantime Czech riders Martin Blaha and Jiri Hochmann took advantage of the situation to steal a lap on the field and take the lead.

As the race headed into the final ten kilometres the Australian pair only had two points and were well down the rankings but they timed their winning attack to perfection leaving the rest of the field to mount a futile chase.

On the way to gaining the lap they also collected five points for an intermediate sprint win to put them on eight points and on top of the standings. For the remainder of the race they made sure they marked every move and secured a well deserved win.

"I don't think they like us very much," joked Meyer after the race.

"We were very motivated out there. I think you could see in the last 60 laps we were never going to die until the death.

"Leigh and I knew that coming into today if we won the world title it would take our (Cyclones) total to seven and that would make us the most successful (team) ever," said Meyer who had opted out of the teams pursuit to concentrate on his defence of the points race, in which he placed second, and Madison titles.

"There was a bit of pressure on us, we had not won a world title (here). We have both won world titles the past two years."

Howard had narrowly missed the final cut for the triumphant teams pursuit quartet and didn't want to miss out on a world champion's rainbow jersey.

"It was very difficult," said Howard. "We had to wait and wait until the rest were really tired because we knew everyone was going to follow us. We did that tactic really well."

The only other Australian in action today was Tasmanian teenager Amy Cure. The 18 year old baby of the team went into the remaining three races of the six race omnium in fifth place and moved to fourth after the scratch race before fading in the closing time trial to finish a creditable eighth in her first senior championships.

Australian Medal Summary

Gold

• Men's Teams Pursuit * - Jack Bobridge, Rohan Dennis, Luke Durbridge and Michael Hepburn
• Men's Individual Pursuit - Jack Bobridge
• Women's Team Sprint * - Anna Meares and Kaarle McCulloch
• Women's Sprint * - Anna Meares
• Women's Keirin * - Anna Meares
• Men's Madison - Cameron Meyer and Leigh Howard
• Men's Keirin * - Shane Perkins
• Men's Omnium * - Michael Freiberg

Silver

• Women's Scratch Race - Katherine Bates
• Men's Points Race - Cameron Meyer

Bronze

• Men's Individual Pursuit - Michael Hepburn

Cycling Australia