The Australian women's team pursuit has vowed to come out fighting in its track cycling world championship title defence, despite narrowly avoiding an embarrassing qualifying-round failure in London.
The strongly favoured quartet of Annette Edmondson, Georgia Baker, Ashlee Ankudinoff and Amy Cure snuck into the semi-finals, where they will face the USA, after qualifying fourth fastest on Thursday afternoon (Friday AEDT).
Australia, who twice broke the world record en route to gold at the 2015 world championships in Paris, finished with a time of 4 minutes 20.830 seconds - a mere 0.224 seconds quicker than Great Britain, who finished fifth and missed out on a shot at the medals.
Australia will on Friday (Saturday morning AEDT) meet the top-ranked Team USA who set the pace mark with a time of 4 minutes 16.180 seconds - a full four-and-a-half seconds faster than the defending champions.
"To be honest we're a bit disappointed with the time - with our preparation and everything we know we're capable of a much quicker time than that," Cure said.
"Full credit to the Americans out there, they rode awesome and we just got beaten by a better team in the qualifying.
"...(But) we know we're capable of doing a much quicker time than (4 minutes 16 seconds)."
But Cure was steadfast in her belief that their semi-final opponents are beatable - and with good reason.
Just 12 months ago the Australian team set the world mark of 4 minutes 13.683 seconds in Paris, and Cure believes their preparation this year has been every bit as perfect.
"I believe that we're capable of beating a 16, we did it last year when we did a 13," Cure said.
"Our training and preparation has been the same if not better than leading into Paris.
"All of us girls have full faith in ourselves that we can bring it back.
"We're not out of it just yet, we'll definitely be coming back fighting."
The winner of the Australia-USA semi-final will then get a shot at either Canada or New Zealand in the gold medal race later on Friday.
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