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With her usual effervescence, Laura Trott has travelled to Australia laden with excitement and determined to build on her ever-burgeoning reputation.
Trott is not the first teenager to travel ‘Down Under’ in search of themselves but the 19-year-old knows her talent better than most and is eager to enhance her reputation at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships, which begins in Melbourne on April 4. Ordinarily, the event marks the end of the track season but for Trott and the other 15 riders in the Great Britain team, it is about the bigger picture four months’ hence - the Olympic Games.
"I just want to do it, I'm just excited. I just wish I could go out and do it now." Trott told Press Association Sport of the Olympics.
She will have to wait but the next time Trott travels to a competition will be for the Olympics, which is 20 minutes by train from her family home in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire.
Having learned the lesson of lost baggage on a trip to Colombia in December 2010, when she had to wear Victoria Pendleton's kit, Trott packed her favourite pair of race shoes and a whole set of kit in her hand luggage for her first trip to Australia. Also included was a set of hair straighteners.
Trott is set to ride in the multi-discipline omnium and in the three-woman, three-kilometre team pursuit, an event in which Britain are defending champions and set a world record in winning gold at February's UCI Track World Cup in London. Trott, champion in Apeldoorn 12 months ago alongside Dani King and Wendy Houvenaghel, added: "I want to win it again. The worlds is the last competition before the Olympics - it would be nice to go into the Olympics being world champion."
Trott has enjoyed wearing the rainbow jersey awarded to cycling's world champions but knows Britain's team pursuit squad - Trott, King, Houvenaghel and Joanna Rowsell - are capable of more than the three minutes 18.148 seconds which delivered gold on the Olympic track.
Trott added: "We broke the world record in London but we always look at graphs and think 'is that the perfect ride? I don't think we've yet done a perfect ride in competition. The last few training rides have been really good. We're coming together as a team now and if we can just nail it on the day it will be awesome."
Trott's training is tailored for the team pursuit but the six-event omnium is one where her talents are displayed in full.
"I've got so much more confidence in that event now than I've ever had," she said.
"Okay, I won junior worlds, but I won that because I was a lot stronger for my age than most people are. Then I got flung into the women and I was rubbish. Now, I've got medals at the last two World Cups. I've made mistakes and still medalled."
Trott recognises her flaws and has been conducting video analysis of points races with coach Paul Manning to improve on her performance in London, when she took bronze behind Sarah Hammer of the United States in a highly competitive field. She said: "I didn't have a good omnium. I had a good few events - the points race let me down massively. I came 17th. That's pretty bad, considering only 22 people rode.
“I've been watching videos back and seeing what I do wrong, where I go wrong and who rides them well, how people win them. The points race at worlds will tell whether I've actually listened and watched properly."
Trott recognises the lottery-like qualities of a points race but knows how crucial a good performance could be. She said: "I only scored one point at the London world cup but if I'd scored two, I'd have come ninth and won the omnium (overall)."
Marking riders is a regular tactic in bunch races and Trott anticipates she will always be watched, particularly after proving her potential with victory in the elimination race in London. "I just think because I'm in a GB top, they're going to watch me anyway," added Trott, who is prolific in the omnium's final event, the 500 metre time-trial. "They're not going to let me go. I haven't lost a 500 in an omnium for a year and a half. Cali was the first one I won and I haven't lost one since."
That first 500m time-trial success in Trott's current run came in Pendleton's clothes.
Pendleton is set to retire after the Olympics and Trott is the heir apparent to the 'glamour girl' tag associated with the Beijing champion. Like Pendleton, Trott is also delivering on the bike and she is keen to do so again in Melbourne.
You can follow all the action from the 2012 UCI Track Cycling World Championships on the British Cycling website and on Twitter @BCreports.
