Australia's female gymnasts are in danger of missing their first Olympics since 1988 after producing their worst performance at an artistic world championships in more than 25 years.
Needing to be one of the top eight qualifiers to make the teams final in Glasgow - and automatically qualify for next year's Rio Games - Australia narrowly avoided total disaster in finishing 14th over the weekend.
Teams which finished 9th-16th qualify for April's Olympic test event in Rio, the Aussies with plenty of improvement to do if they are to be a chance of taking one of the four remaining teams berths on offer - and continue a run of qualifying a women's team for every Olympics since the 1992 Barcelona Games.
The Australians went into the championships ranked between 8th-10th in the world, but were left to pick up the pieces after scraping into the top 16 - their worst result in a teams event since finishing 16th in 1989.
Going into the Glasgow meet, Australia had contested seven of the past eight women's teams finals at the world championships but, with veteran superstar Lauren Mitchell at home recovering from a ruptured ACL, they were no match for the finals contenders.
The powerful US team - led by the reigning two-time all-around world champion Simone Biles - dominated qualifying, with the Netherlands taking the eighth and last berth in the teams final with a combined score of 222.354.
Australia were well back with a combined total of 214.812 - failing to crack it for the top 12 on any of the four apparatus.
Compounding the poor teams display, no team member managed to qualify for an individual apparatus final or the individual all-around - the best effort being that of Larrissa Miller who finished 15th on the uneven bars.
Australia will join Romania, Brazil, France, Belgium, Germany, South Korea and Switzerland at the Olympic test event.
Australia's three male gymnasts - Prashanth Sellathurai, Naoya Tsukahara and Luke Wiwatowski - who are only competing as individuals rather than as a team, will be in action on Monday night (AEDT) as they seek to secure berths in apparatus finals.
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