Rebecca Wiasak smashed her title defence with a masterful individual pursuit ride to kick-start Australia's track cycling world championship campaign with an opening night gold medal.
Wiasak, who let her emotion out with tears on the podium, led from start to finish in the final to thrash Poland's Malgorzata Wojtyra by nearly eight seconds.
Her flawless evening didn't go quite as planned once she got off the bike.
The affable Wiasak got tongue-tied in her trackside interview before suffering a wardrobe malfunction as she awaited her medal from UCI president Brian Cookson.
The 31-year-old's earring got caught into the rainbow winner's jersey, her second following last year's triumph in Paris, and fell to the floor as Cookson prepared to hand over the medal in front of 6000 fans at London's velodrome.
"It was a little bit embarrassing," Wiasak laughed.
"Brian Cookson is just standing...I was like 'oh my gosh, I'm playing with my earring and he's got a world championship medal to put around my neck'.
"I definitely didn't nail the podium and the interviews. (But) I'm pretty happy with my performances on the track, absolutely."
The 31-year-old still has another goal, with her sights set on a Rio Olympics spot on the team pursuit squad - for which she was first reserve in Thursday morning's qualifying in London.
"That is still my goal, I really want to break into the teams pursuit team before Rio," she said.
If so, she can't ask for a much better audition than Wednesday - when she also put in a blistering individual pursuit qualifying ride of three minutes 31.287 seconds.
"I think I broke the velodrome record this morning and did a 3.31, which is a world class time," she said.
"I did what I needed to do in the final."
It was the only medal joy for Australia in the four medal events on offer on the opening night.
Strong medal hopefuls Anna Meares and Steph Morton fell short in the bronze medal race for the women's team sprint while the men's sprint team missed out on the medal rounds by a millisecond.
Despite the setback, the team of Nathan Hart, Matthew Glaetzer and Patrick Constable remained upbeat having exceeded expectations with their time of 43.497 seconds.
"It's frustrating for sure. We came here to race finals, but at the same time, that's sport," Glaetzer said.
Glenn O'Shea finished 15th in the men's 15km scratch race, more than a lap behind Spanish winner Sebastian Mora Vedri, and will now turn his focus to the omnium starting on Friday (Saturday AEDT).
In Thursday's action, two gold medals are on offer for Australian riders - in the women's keirin, where they will have Meares and Morton and possibly Kaarle McCulloch, and the men's team pursuit, who qualified third fastest on Wednesday but face world champions New Zealand in the semi-finals for a crack at gold.
Australia's women's pursuit team will open their title defence with qualifying in the morning.
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