Anna Maree Devenish Meares[1] OAM (born 21 September 1983) is an Australian retired track cyclist.

She has been the 500 metre track time trial world champion on four occasions, and a gold medallist at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games.

With the family living in the small Queensland coal-mining town of Middlemount, it was more than two hours drive to the nearest cycling track at Mackay for the girls to train.

[citation needed] Over the course of her career, Meares has talked about how gradually she became aware of her position as a role model, portraying "a different stereotypical image of what it is to be a strong woman.

[4] During the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, she won a gold medal, and set a new world record in the Women's 500-metre time trial of 33.952 seconds.

In 2005, Meares enrolled in a Bachelor of Learning Design course at Central Queensland University, but deferred her studies to concentrate on sport.

[10][11] Meares made an astonishing come back from a very bad cycling accident at the World Cup in January 2008 when she broke her neck.

Meares crashed in the third round of the World Cup circuit in Los Angeles in January 2008, seven months out from the Olympics.

The heat was re-run and although Guo won by a few millimetres, she was relegated for coming down the track and pushing Meares onto the côte d'azure on the final lap.

This put Meares through to the final ride-off for gold against Victoria Pendleton, where she was beaten and received the silver medal.

In the decider Pendleton won in a photo finish, with Meares settling for bronze after defeating Lyubov Shulika.

[16] In the keirin, Meares won both her qualifying races before reaching the final, where she held off Russian Ekaterina Gnidenko and German Kristina Vogel to win the first of two world championships in Melbourne.

[9][19] The 'Project' involved Meares racing against male sprinter: Alex Bird; who would mimic Pendleton: former "friend" turned "enemy".

The objective was to run multiple racing scenarios and find the best tactic to beat "Queen Vic".

[2] Anna Meares, Phil Liggett, and Robbie McEwen co-hosted the Seven Network broadcast of the 2023, 2024 & 2025 Santos Men's Tour Down Under used by Peacock in the US.