THE opportunity to bask in success tends to be brutally short-lived in top-level sport.

No sooner have the final strains of the national anthem faded away then it is time to regroup and focus on the next big goal.

After winning double gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Neil Fachie knows that feeling better than most.

"We had the high life for about a week after the Games but then it was back down to Manchester and everyone talking about looking ahead to Rio," he says. "It's nice to have these moments, but you get that grounding pretty quickly again in sport. You are always thinking about the next thing on the horizon."

With less than 18 months to go until the Olympics in Rio, it is a target fast approaching. Before then Fachie, 31, will turn his attention to the 2015 Para-cycling Track World Championships which get under way in Apeldoorn on Thursday. Aberdeen-born Fachie, who is visually impaired, is the reigning world champion in the sprint and kilo.

"It looks like we are ahead of the game but there are a few new bikes coming through and I know everyone will have stepped up a fair bit," he says. "Part of this world championships will be seeing where the opposition is but we will be targeting two gold medals again. That will count towards qualification points for Rio so it's important that we do well.

"Our main rivals will probably be the Dutch guys because they have a strong team. They have developed a lot of riders over the past few years. Racing at home in these world championships is going to be a big thing for them. They will desperately want to win and I know how it feels to win at home, so I will have to do my best to not let them enjoy that.

"There is also a Spanish pairing who are good, the Germans and possibly the Australians. The thing about para-sport is we don't race that often so there can be big jumps in improvement between one competition and the next. It will be interesting to see where everyone is at."

Rio next summer would mark Fachie's third Paralympics after winning gold and silver at London 2012. He is a six-time world champion and claimed double gold with sighted pilot and fellow Scot Craig MacLean at Glasgow 2014 last summer.

Fachie, who suffers from the congenital eye condition retinitis pigmentosa, began his sporting career in athletics and competed at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics in the 100m and 200m. After failing to make the podium, he turned his attention to track cycling.

Based in Manchester, Fachie trains under the British Cycling programme alongside his fiancee Lora Turnham, the current road race world champ-ion who will be racing in the women's B/VI tandem events in Apeldoorn this week.

This year's world championships will see Fachie paired with pilot Pete Mitchell rather than MacLean. It was with Mitchell, who came through British Cycling's Academy Programme, that Fachie won double world gold last year in Mexico.

"With only one bike going to the worlds it was always going to be tough to choose between Craig and Pete," says Fachie. "They are both so close [in ability] which makes it that much harder. Luckily I don't have to make that choice myself.

"Unfortunately one of them wasn't going to get to go and this time it was Craig. He's still part of the programme and it's his decision whether he wants to keep pushing on to Rio and be in that fight with Pete again. The door is still open for him."

Despite his impressive palmares, Fachie isn't one to rest on his laurels. "I'm sure soon enough there will be someone who will be pushing for my job," he says. "It's something we all face in the sport and if not for Rio I think that will happen for Tokyo.

"It's good to have that because it pushes you on. Hopefully I will keep going for as long as I can in cycling but if someone comes along and takes my job? So be it, that's sport."

Yet there is no doubting Fachie's fierce ambition. "We (he and Barney Storey) won gold in the kilo at London 2012 but Craig MacLean and Anthony Kappes had issues on the start-line and never got to finish their race," he says.

"I want to go to another Paralympics where everyone does finish and prove once and for all that I did deserve to be champion - which I'm convinced is the case anyway.

"I certainly want to defend my title and would like to go on to Tokyo in 2020. I would also like to be the first tandem to break the minute barrier (in the kilo) at sea level. We did it at altitude last year and that is something else I will be pushing for."