An inexperienced Australian squad has mounted an outstanding comeback to win the men's team pursuit at the world track cycling championships.
Australia overcame a deficit of nearly half a second midway through the 4km final on day one of the championships in Cali, Colombia.
They ended up beating the Danes by nearly two seconds to successfully defend their title.
Glenn O'Shea and Alex Edmondson, who were members of last year's world championship team, combined with Luke Davison and Mitch Mulhearn in the final.
Davison came in for Miles Scotson, who had ridden in the qualifying round.
Australia were well behind Denmark in qualifying and only scraped into the final by 0.099 of a second ahead of Russia.
It is one of the greenest men's team pursuit squads that Australia has sent to a world championships.
Apart from last year's gold medals for O'Shea and Edmondson, their only other world championship podium in the event was O'Shea's silver two years ago.
O'Shea also had to overcome a bad bout of jet lag and travel sickness.
"That was pretty good wasn't it?," O'Shea said.
"A bit harder than last year I think - today we were a bit disappointed with the heat, we only just snuck into the final so we were pretty motivated."
Denmark qualified fastest in four minutes, 0.176 seconds and Australia posted 4:01.516.
While the Danes made a strong start in the final, the Australians kept to their schedule and eventually cracked them.
Australia won in 3:57.907, well ahead of Denmark's 3:59.623.
New Zealand beat Russia in the bronze medal ride-off.
"We've come here with not a lot of experience, but we had full belief in coach Tim Decker and in Cycling Australia, so we had to back ourselves because we knew wed done the work," Edmondson said.
"I guess it showed tonight because we managed to ride a 3.57 on pretty much an outdoor track."
O'Shea is the "elder" of the team at 24, while Mulhearn and Davison are 23 and Scotson and Edmondson are 20.
While he did not ride in the final, Scotson was also awarded a gold medal.
In other day one action, the Australian combination of Dan Ellis, Shane Perkins and Matthew Glaetzer was sixth in the team sprint.
New Zealand surprised Germany to win the gold medal.
Australia's Ashlee Ankudinoff was 19th in the 10km women's scratch race, with Belgian Kelly Druyts taking the gold medal.
