A broken axle bolt has cost Australia any chance of defending the men's team pursuit title at the track cycling world championships in Paris, but the women's squad is flying, setting a national record while qualifying.
Australia's only medal on day one came when sprint queen Anna Meares successfully reunited with Kaarle McCulloch to claim bronze in the women's team sprint.
Earlier on Wednesday night (Thursday morning AEDT), the men's team pursuit quartet suffered an accident, meaning the best result the two-time defending champions can hope for is bronze.
Jack Bobridge was the only rider to avoid trouble after Luke Davison's right crank broke off his bike on the very first bend. A small axle bolt had failed.
Alex Edmondson then immediately suffered a rear puncture before Mitchell Mulhern crashed over the top of him.
Australia was allowed a restart after a break to repair the bikes but could post only the fifth-fastest qualifying time.
As a result, they've missed out on racing for a spot in the gold-medal final on Friday morning (AEDT).
National endurance coach Tim Decker says there's no doubt the crash affected the team's time of 3 minutes 58.9 seconds - but he didn't want to make too many excuses.
"It's pretty gut-wrenching to see all that unfold," he told AAP, adding it was always going to be very hard for the riders to regroup for the restart.
Bobridge, back in the national track squad after spending the past few years focused on the road, was philosophical.
The 4000m individual pursuit world-record holder said it was better to have a mechanical problem now rather than during the Rio Olympics in August 2016.
The women's team pursuit squad slashed almost two seconds off the national record when Annette Edmondson, Ashlee Ankudinoff, Melissa Hoskins and Amy Cure set the fastest qualifying time of 4 minutes 18.135 seconds.
The quartet broke the previous national record of 4:20.999, which they'd set at the Australian championships in late January.
The team - which won bronze in 2014 - is now dreaming of beating four-time reigning world champions Great Britain in Thursday night's final.
The British women set the second-best qualifying time of 4:18.207.
"Yeah, anything's possible but we're taking it one round at a time and hopefully we end up on top," Tasmanian Cure said.
Meares and McCulloch beat rivals and reigning world and Olympic champions Kristina Vogel and Miriam Welte of Germany in the bronze-medal race of the women's team sprint.
But Chinese pair Gong Jinjie and Zhong Tianshi set a new world record time of 32.034 seconds when beating Russia into silver.
"That was a very impressive ride by the Chinese team," Meares said.
"For us this is the first time Kaarle and I have ridden since London and in a different position (with McCulloch first wheel).I'm so pleased with how we performed tonight."
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