So this is Anna Meares’ house.
The fabulous, frenetic, noisy Olympic velodrome that she, and our many other well-performed Aussie cyclists, have known since puberty.
For me, it's the first time there, and it just may coincide with Meares’ last.
And what I found is, unlike so many other Olympic sports, there is just nowhere to hide.
It’s all so open, and active, and constant, with seemingly never a moment without the announcer’s voice blaring.
And we go from one event to another. Like a McDonald’s takeaway on wheels.
Next please. What’s that – a women’s sprint, main meal or repechage?
The women’s omnium (equivalent to the pentathlon on two-wheels).
Or a ‘keirin’ (a sprint that is started by someone on what looks like a mini-bike), the team pursuit, men’s sprint … all seemingly one after the other, at great speed – somewhere between 55-75km an hour.
In the centre of it are these barriered-off hubs of activities - right there in the middle of the scene – the team pits.
It’s the pulse of the track where each team has a bicycle coral – preparing the next competitor, winding down the previous, coaches and officials standing in their individual lot (no one, except the riders, seems to have a seat) … and the crowd on the other side of the steep track can see it all.
I count just one cyclist when I arrive, Glenn O’Shea, and 11 team officials all in their green polo shirts.
Next door is the British ‘cycle-pen’. If the Americans own the Olympic pool, the Brits currently own the velodrome.
Yet the respect, and rapport, between the nations is obvious and overt (as I said, this is all out in the open with the fascinated public peering down from above).
When opponents slowly pedal into the flat centre-zone, we see them embrace, congratulate and console.
While the action never abates around them.
Whirling away. Every moment described by the announcer on a sound system that is almost deafening.
It’s not an iconic day for our greatest Olympic cyclist, the 32-year-old from the Queensland mining town of Blackwater. I missed that two days earlier when Meares won bronze in the women’s keirin to give her an Australian record of having won individual medals in four Olympics – her first was when she was a 20-year-old in Athens in 2004.
It wasn’t the way Meares wanted to finish these Games. In a repechage in the event she won in London four years ago.
After riding the emotion of the previous day of not being able to compete for a medal, she started her day in the second-round repechage, beaten by Chinese girl Tianshi Zhong in a three-rider-race.
It meant she would have to be back six hours later for the race to determine the placings from 9th to 12th.
After the race, while the hurly-burly continued all around, she sat there alone – seemingly just pondering – for 20 minutes, her solitary time to herself interrupted only briefly by head of performance Kevin Tabotta.
In other sports it would have been a locker-room private moment, exposed only perhaps by a ‘lipstick’ TV camera, but everything seems so open and raw in cycling for this novice.
Meares sat there, thoughts to herself ... but with no privacy.
Meanwhile, between her and the crowd, women’s omnium rider Annette Edmondson competed against 17 others in the scratch race, one of six different races in this event which for the layman like me is too complex to explain in detail.
Whirl, whirl, nothing stops.
When the break between morning and afternoon sessions comes, Meares climbs the steep boards to visit her contingent in the Aussie-dominated bleachers. The contemplating stopped and the emotion appeared to pour out. One more ride for our flag-bearer in Rio, and it won’t be for glory.
In the afternoon session, the media contingent had grown … for what they anticipate will be Anna Meares’ last ride, then again maybe not with a home Commonwealth Games only 20 months away.
She comes second again in a four-rider race, this time to a Kiwi of all nationalities – Natasha Hansen – forcing our Anna to 10th position overall.
Yet, she has one more course to navigate.
At one end inside the track is the media mixed zone. A dozen television stations, all partitioned from each other, and then the press open area further along the arc-shaped line of pens that the cyclists navigate at the end of their race … or use for a wind down, or warm-up parade if they need space before or after.
Australian host broadcaster Channel 7 did three interviews – for the live coverage, for the news hour and for Sunrise. In between is a BBC TV interview for Britain and a BBC Radio interview with Victoria Pendleton, who beat her for the gold in Beijing in 2008 in the sprint (Meares reversed the order in London).
Again, in this wide open hub beneath the track that never had a moment’s rest from the whirling action, tears flowed between the great competitors and friends before they ended with a hug of friendship and respect.
Then it was to more TV interviews, ending with ABC Australia and Sports TV Brazil, taking the number to six on-screen chats.
The press still awaits, as do two more times of fielding questions – each time including ‘is this the end?’.
A polite and patient Meares, 45 minutes after she finished her race and still leaning on her bike, ended her second press-area talk to a posse (in two groups) from Australia, Britain, Canada and the US.
By which time Annette Edmondson has completed the omnium individual pursuit leg … almost unnoticed by the media who had eyes only for Anna.
“I ride hard and race to the best of my ability and put myself in a position to win in those races, but for the first time in 22 years I couldn’t get any more out of my body,” was a confession that was foreign to this champion of the track.
And then came that question, I assume for the seventh time in half an hour but not the last: was that going to be your last race at the Olympics?
“I want to give myself the opportunity to be removed from this environment, and I promised myself some time to … I just wanted to get here and race first. I’ll give myself time to assess everything and make a decision.”
It was 6.15am in Sydney and breakfast radio and other interviews awaited … for the first time away from the gaze of the onlookers, the drone of cycle-wheels, the never-ending British voice of the commentator during this frantic sport’s version of Big Brother.
And a few hours after that she was off to more media – what they call a “grassy knoll” – a designated area outside the Athletes’ Village where more media can gather and record.
It was a fascinating insight into Olympic cycling’s world. Whirl, whirl, no time to pause..
I was fortunate to be a novice at the pool for Michael Phelps’ last night earlier in the week. A career never to be matched ended with gold in the medley relay followed by a standing ovation.
If that was the last we saw of Anna Meares, she departs differently but no less a champion in Aussies’ eyes – for her feats, her grace, and in my view after my only brief time at a velodrome, how she handled her final day in The House where everything is there for everyone to see.
Meares had already replied so eloquently, after making history with her keirin bronze to become our most decorated Olympic cyclist with a booty of two gold, one silver and three bronze (across all four sprint events (keirin, sprint, team sprint and the 500m time trial) about why she came to The House one more time.
“A lot of people have asked me why I’m still here, why I’ve come back because I could have gone out on top of the sport in London,” she announced the other day.
“If I did that I would have missed out on my 11th world title; I would have missed out on breaking the world record for the 500; I would have missed out on my sixth Olympic medal and I would have missed out on being the flag bearer for the Australia Team."
And I would have missed the chance to see a coalminer’s daughter remain a champion until … well, maybe the end.
Neil Cadigan
olympics.com.au
